What We Pass Along

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

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

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

On the next one, the Wind pushed harder.

The frisbee tilted away from Rob and sailed toward the edge of the field, finally landing 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.

The person smiled.

Rob smiled too.

He could have waved thanks and gone back to throwing by himself. 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 they hadn’t planned to play together. They simply threw.

One throw floated high. Another made Rob run a few steps to his left. The stranger nearly missed one and laughed while chasing it across the grass.

Rob laughed too.

A few minutes earlier, they had been two people standing in the same park.

Now they were playing catch.

The frisbee came back to Rob once more. He caught it, turned it in his hand and looked across the field.

Then he threw.

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

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

“Oh, come on!”

Rob ran after it as the Wind twisted around him, pulling leaves into the air and tugging at his hoodie. He kept his eyes on the frisbee as the park began to disappear behind a blur of red, orange and gold.

Then the smell of grass vanished.

Something warm and sweet replaced it.

Rob stopped running.

“Okay. That smells good.”

His frisbee floated ahead of him, slipped through an open doorway and disappeared inside.

Rob followed.

The frisbee slid across the floor of a busy kitchen and stopped near a woman standing at a counter.

She looked down, picked it up and turned it over in her hands.

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

Rob stepped through the doorway. “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.

“I can see that.”

She handed him the frisbee.

“I’m Jean.”

“Rob.”

The kitchen was filled with bowls, trays, ingredients and handwritten cards. Something was baking nearby, and another dish sat cooling on the counter.

“Are you making all of this?” Rob 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. “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. Some were neatly written. Others had ingredients crossed out or little notes squeezed between the lines.

“What are those?”

“Recipes.”

“You wrote them?”

“A lot of them.”

Rob picked one up carefully. “So you don’t forget how to make everything?”

“That helps,” Jean said. “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.

“But then they could make it themselves.”

Jean stopped what she was doing and looked at him.

“Yes.”

Rob waited for the rest of the answer.

There wasn’t one.

Something Worth Sharing

“That didn’t bother you?” Rob asked.

“Why would it?”

“Well, it was your recipe.”

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

Rob looked down at the frisbee tucked beneath his arm.

Jean noticed.

“What do you do with that?”

“Throw it.”

“To yourself?”

“Sometimes. 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.

He thought about the stranger in the field. The frisbee had travelled from one person to another and back again. He hadn’t lost anything by throwing it.

But something had changed because he did.

Jean told him how she had spent years cooking and catering, and how people kept asking for the recipes behind the food they had 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.

Her first cookbook was called 150 Delicious Squares.

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

Jean smiled. “People liked squares.”

That 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.

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

“It is.”

“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.

Rob grinned.

“That’s a pretty good throw.”

A gust slipped through the doorway and lifted several recipe cards from the table.

One floated past Rob.

He reached for it, missed, then caught it against his chest.

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

“It’s funny.”

“What is?”

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

Jean smiled.

Rob handed it back.

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

He stopped.

Jean waited.

“And then it keeps going.”

“It might.”

Rob thought about the stranger in the field.

One throw had become another.

Then another.

He had no idea who that person was, and they knew nothing about him. None of that had mattered. For a few minutes, there had 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.”

“No,” Jean said. “You don’t.”

Before Rob could ask anything else, voices sounded outside.

The door opened and people began arriving.

Someone carried in another dish. Someone helped move chairs. Another person set something they had made beside Jean’s food.

Soon the quiet kitchen wasn’t quiet at all.

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

Rob watched it all.

Nobody had brought everything.

But nearly everyone had brought something.

Food moved around the table. So did recipes, stories, jokes and memories.

Rob looked down at his frisbee.

Maybe that was why playing alone in the field had felt so different once somebody else joined in.

The frisbee hadn’t changed.

The people had.

The Wind brushed against the window.

Rob recognized it immediately.

“I think that’s my ride.”

Jean looked at the frisbee under his arm. “Taking that with you?”

“Definitely.”

Rob started toward the doorway, then stopped.

“Jean?”

She looked up.

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

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

“No.”

Rob waited.

Jean smiled.

“You don’t always need to.”

The Wind curled around Rob’s feet, and the kitchen disappeared.

A moment later, he was standing in the field again.

The afternoon sun had dropped lower. Leaves still tumbled across the grass, and the stranger was still there.

Rob looked at the frisbee in his hand.

Then he looked across the field.

The other person smiled.

Rob smiled back and threw.

The frisbee sailed through the autumn air and settled into their hands.

They caught it and sent it back.

Rob watched it coming toward him, reached out with his right hand and caught it.

This time, he held it for just a moment.

Then he wondered:

What might happen when we share something with someone else?