Cairo, Egypt

My daughter finally asked for her mother’s apron

Dear Delyara, My wife died when our daughter was twelve. She is twenty-nine now and has always refused most of her mother’s things. Jewellery, scarves, recipes—I offered, she said no. I stopped asking because grief has its own timing. Today, she came into my kitchen and asked, “Do you still have Mum’s apron?” I did. Of course I did. Green with yellow lemons, one pocket torn at the corner. My wife wore it almost every day. I brought it out. My daughter pressed it against herself and laughed because it was too short. Then she said she wants to learn her mother’s stuffed vine leaves before she has children because “someone should know how she made them.” We cooked together. I was useless. Her mother never let me near the rolling part because I made them too fat. My daughter apparently inherited my hands. We produced an entire tray of ugly vine leaves and ate them anyway. At one point, she wiped her hands on the apron exactly the way her mother used to. I looked away before she noticed my face. For seventeen years, I kept thinking I was preserving my wife’s things for our daughter. Today I understood I was really preserving the possibility that one day she might choose them herself.