What We Pass Along

The Wind was busy that afternoon, pushing fallen leaves across the grass, shaking the branches overhead, and occasionally giving Rob’s throws just enough of a nudge to make him chase after them.

Rob didn’t mind, since he had an entire field to himself and the shifting breeze made every throw a little different.

He tossed his frisbee high, ran underneath it, and caught it cleanly with his right hand before trying a longer throw, watching the disc float ahead of him and drop gently toward the grass.

On his next attempt, however, the Wind pushed harder, tilting the frisbee away from Rob and sending it sailing toward the edge of the field, where it finally landed near someone walking past.

Rob started toward it, but the person had already picked it up. They looked at the frisbee, then across the field at Rob, and without saying anything, threw it back.

Rob caught it, and when the stranger smiled, he smiled too.

He could have simply waved thanks and returned to throwing by himself, but instead, he sent the frisbee back across the field.

For the next few minutes, neither of them said anything. They didn’t know each other’s names and hadn’t planned to play together, but somehow that didn’t matter. They simply kept throwing the frisbee back and forth.

One throw floated high, another sent Rob running a few steps to his left, and when the stranger nearly missed a catch and had to chase the frisbee across the grass, they both laughed.

A few minutes earlier, they had been two people standing in the same park, going about their afternoons separately. Now, without exchanging a single word, they were playing catch.

The frisbee came back to Rob once more, and he caught it, turned it in his hand, and looked across the field before sending it toward his new throwing partner.

This time, however, the stranger never got the chance to catch it.

A strong gust swept underneath the frisbee and sent it climbing into the air.

“Oh, come on!” Rob shouted as he ran after it, but the Wind was already twisting around him, pulling leaves into the air and tugging at his hoodie.

He kept his eyes on the frisbee as the familiar park began disappearing behind a blur of red, orange, and gold, until even the smell of the grass vanished and something warm and sweet took its place.

Rob stopped running and breathed in the unfamiliar scent.

“Okay. That smells good.”

His frisbee floated ahead of him, slipped through an open doorway, and disappeared inside, leaving Rob to follow it.

The frisbee slid across the floor of a busy kitchen and came to a stop near a woman standing at the counter. She looked down, picked it up, and turned it over in her hands.

“I don’t remember putting this in the recipe,” she said.

Rob stepped through the doorway and smiled apologetically. “Sorry. The Wind has a habit of delivering me before it tells me where I’m going.”

The woman glanced toward the doorway, where a few leaves were still tumbling past, and replied, “I can see that.”

She handed him the frisbee and introduced herself. “I’m Jean.”

“Rob,” he replied, taking the disc.

The kitchen was filled with bowls, trays, ingredients, and handwritten cards. Something was baking nearby, while another dish sat cooling on the counter, and Rob couldn’t help wondering what all the food was for.

“Are you making all of this?” he asked.

“Not all of it,” Jean said as she checked something in the oven. “But enough of it.”

“For what?”

Jean smiled. “Company’s coming.”

Rob looked toward the doorway, trying to imagine how many people might be arriving.

“How much company?”

“Enough that standing there counting dishes probably isn’t going to help me.”

Rob laughed and moved closer to the table.

That was when he noticed the cards scattered among the ingredients. Some were neatly written, while others had ingredients crossed out or little notes squeezed between the lines.

“What are those?” Rob asked.

“Recipes.”

“You wrote them?”

“A lot of them,” Jean replied.

Rob carefully picked up one of the cards and examined the writing.

“So you don’t forget how to make everything?”

“That helps,” Jean explained. “But people also kept asking me for them.”

“For the recipes?”

Jean nodded. “When you make food for people, sooner or later somebody asks how you made it.”

“And you told them?”

“Of course.”

Rob looked back at the card, considering what that meant.

“But then they could make it themselves.”

Jean stopped what she was doing and looked at him.

“Yes.”

Rob waited for the rest of her answer, but there wasn’t one.

Something Worth Sharing

“That didn’t bother you?” Rob asked.

“Why would it?”

“Well, it was your recipe.”

Jean smiled and replied, “It was still my recipe after I shared it.”

Rob glanced down at the frisbee tucked beneath his arm, and Jean noticed.

“What do you do with that?” she asked.

“Throw it.”

“To yourself?”

“Sometimes,” Rob replied. “But mostly with other people.”

“And when you throw it to someone else, is it still your frisbee?”

Rob laughed. “Usually.”

“Then perhaps we aren’t talking about two very different things.”

Rob looked from the frisbee to the recipe card, remembering the stranger he’d met in the field. The frisbee had travelled from one person to another and back again, and although he hadn’t lost anything by throwing it, something had changed because he did.

Jean told him how she’d spent years cooking and catering, and how people kept asking for the recipes behind the food they’d enjoyed. Eventually, sharing them one at a time wasn’t enough.

“So what did you do?” Rob asked.

“I put some of them together.”

“In a book?”

Jean nodded, explaining that her first cookbook was called 150 Delicious Squares.

Rob’s eyes widened. “One hundred and fifty?”

Jean smiled. “People liked squares.”

That first book became another, and then another. Over the years, Jean wrote more than 200 cookbooks, and her Company’s Coming books travelled into kitchens across Canada and far beyond it.

Rob tried to picture all those kitchens, filled with people making recipes that had once been written on Jean’s little cards.

“That’s a lot farther than one recipe card,” he observed.

“It is,” Jean agreed.

“So you shared something with a few people, and then found a way to share it with people you might never even meet.”

Jean nodded, and Rob grinned as he thought about how far those recipes had travelled.

“That’s a pretty good throw.”

Just then, a gust slipped through the doorway and lifted several recipe cards from the table. One floated past Rob, who reached for it, missed, and finally caught it against his chest.

For a moment, he simply studied the little piece of paper in his hand.

“It’s funny,” he said.

“What is?” Jean asked.

“This doesn’t look like it could travel very far.”

Jean smiled as Rob handed the card back to her, still thinking about all the places a single recipe might eventually reach.

“But someone could take this home and make the recipe,” he continued. “Then somebody else could taste it and ask how they made it. And then…”

Rob stopped, trying to imagine how many people might become part of that journey, while Jean waited patiently for him to finish.

“And then it keeps going,” he said.

“It might.”

Rob thought again about the stranger in the field and how one throw had become another, then another. He had no idea who that person was, and they knew nothing about him, but none of that had mattered. For a few minutes, there had simply been a frisbee moving between them, and that had been enough.

“So when you share something, you don’t really know where it might end up,” Rob said.

“No,” Jean replied. “You don’t.”

Before Rob could ask anything else, voices sounded outside, and the door opened as people began arriving.

Someone carried in another dish, another person helped move chairs, and someone else set something they’d made beside Jean’s food. Soon, the quiet kitchen was filled with conversation and laughter as everyone found their places.

Plates moved in one direction and bowls in another, while someone tasted a dish and immediately wanted to know who had made it. That started a conversation about the recipe, which turned into another story and made someone at the other end of the table laugh.

Rob watched it all, noticing that nobody had brought everything, but nearly everyone had brought something.

Food moved around the table, along with recipes, stories, jokes, and memories, and Rob found himself thinking about how different the kitchen felt now that everyone had gathered.

He looked down at his frisbee, remembering how playing alone in the field had changed the moment somebody else joined in.

The frisbee hadn’t changed, but the people had.

Just then, the Wind brushed against the window, and Rob immediately recognized the familiar signal.

“I think that’s my ride,” he said.

Jean glanced at the frisbee tucked beneath his arm. “Taking that with you?”

“Definitely.”

Rob started toward the doorway, but before leaving, he stopped and turned back.

“Jean?”

She looked up.

“When you shared those first recipes, did you know where they would eventually go?”

Jean looked around the table, taking in the food, the recipe cards, and the people gathered together.

“No,” she replied.

Rob waited, and Jean smiled before adding, “You don’t always need to.”

The Wind curled around Rob’s feet, and the busy kitchen slowly disappeared until, a moment later, he was standing in the same field where his Adventure had begun.

The afternoon sun had dropped lower, leaves were still tumbling across the grass, and the stranger was still there.

Rob looked at the frisbee in his hand, then across the field, where the other person smiled at him.

He smiled back and threw, watching as the frisbee sailed through the autumn air and settled into their hands.

The stranger caught it and sent it back, and Rob followed its flight before reaching out with his right hand and catching it cleanly.

This time, he held the frisbee for just a moment, thinking about Jean’s recipes, the people gathered around her table, and how something shared between two people could sometimes travel much farther than either of them expected.

Then he smiled and prepared to send the frisbee back across the field, wondering where this simple game of catch might eventually lead.

How far could one small act of sharing travel?