PeonyMagazine

  Special Issue – November 2025: Table of Return (Part 2 of 4) The number of people at the table is the same as that on the recipe card. The ink has faded to a soft brown, and the handwritten loops collapse into one another like bread soaking in stew. “Who has Nana’s dressing? It lives in the box with rubber bands and errant birthday candles, as though the paper could leave on its own,” someone wonders each November. It almost has—last year it hid inside an envelope stamped 1989, stuck fast with grease and a thumbprint we still call hers. We arrive in pieces, like the ingredients themselves—cousins flying in with scarves still smelling like airplane air, an aunt from two towns over carrying the heavy skillet that only she trusts, a sister who has already started apologizing for the store-bought rolls we will pretend to love. The weather has turned. The last leaves skitter along the sidewalk. Someone points out the first breath of woodsmoke in the neighborhood, and we all nod, as if...