the seaweed wasn't the only thing that faded with time.

My grandmother took out her mother's old recipes that were passed down to her today. It came in a bundle of yellowing scraps of paper. In it, my greatgrandmother had written, very carefully and very neatly, the ingredients of her own concoctions she had cooked up for special events.

Most of the instructions barely meant anything, though. A few writings were made more detailed than others, by the inclusion of directions of how to make the dish; the rest, zilch. But some other things made less sense, even without proper instructions: Fifty cents of rice flour. One kerosene tin of water. How could anyone now, in this time, ever translate that into real terms?

Not even the occasional comments to herself on the proportions being "good" or "not good" could help.

So as my grandmother sifted through whatever odd ends of paper that my greatgrandmother had gotten her hands on, I just sat there, listening recipes being read out, and imagining what wondrous smells and tastes I probably would never experience, ignoring that small part of me that was craving to be somewhere in my greatgrandmother's time forever lost.