My grandmother baked cookies, but she didn't believe in eating them fresh from the oven. She stored them in her cookie jar for a day or two before she would let me have any. "Wait till they come in order," Granny would say. The crisp cookies softened in their ceramic cell — their snug humidor — acquiring more flavor, ripening both in texture and in my imagination.

"Coming in order" — my life is coming in order, as memories waft out of that cookie jar. But what is the recipe for those cookies? Who knows? My grandmother is dead, and her knowledge and memories are lost.