In Loving Memory of Vickie

Today is Pazcki day! (AKA Fat Tuesday!)

I am not Polish, but my dear sweet neighbor Vickie was. She introduced our family to the tradition of eating Pazcki on "Fat Tuesday". Ever since we first moved into this house (14 years ago) Vickie would send over a dozen or so Pazcki that she lovingly made. Early in the dayVickie would make the dough and would spend the day letting them rise and deep frying the balls of dough in hot grease. Then she would roll them in powdered sugar when they were starting to cool. When my kids would come home from school she would call them over to get their after school "treat". Once a year, my kids would look forward to her yummy pazcki. It became one of our "traditions". Oh how we loved our dear sweet Vickie.

One year, when Vickie was getting up in age (in her mid 90's) I asked her if she was making pazcki on Tuesday and she said she was just too tired to do all the work. I volunteered to come over and make them with her. Actually, what I was doing was asking her to teach me so she could pass the tradition down to someone. Nobody in her family has ever made them. She gave me her recipe and with it, she imparted her pearls of wisdom. We spent the day together laughing and telling stories and baking pazcki, unaware of the 50+ years between us. We were friends; two women with a common interest. We shared a love of cooking, a love of our families, and our love of God.

You see, the following year Vickie was put in a nursing home because her memory began to fail. She could not be trusted to live alone anymore. How it devastated her to leave her home and the routine of cooking her own meals. Slowly, she began to change, as dementia often does. She didn't know she was doing it and it was so out of her character. I couldn't see her like that. I wanted to remember Vickie the way she was all those years we were neighbors...how she was on that day we baked pazcki together. Vickie's laughter resonates loudly in my heart at the very thought of her. Sadly, Vickie passed away on November 3rd, 2008 at the age of 98. Vickie Meleski will live on in our hearts and her pazcki will forever be a family tradition in our home.

...Time to punch down the dough.