When I was sick, my mother drove me to my grandmother’s house with an overnight bag, opened the car door, and drove off hurriedly. My grandmother always pretended to be shocked by my sudden appearance, but there was always a bowl of borscht soup with sour cream waiting for me at her kitchen table.

My grandmother grew up in the Ukraine, where beets were often the only food they would find to get them through those awful winters. She believed that borscht soup had extraordinary powers to cure almost any illness.

After the soup, she would lock me in a spare bedroom, apply mustard plasters to my chest, turn the radiator up to full blast and close the door. In an hour or two, the trouble had been boiled out of me, and I could return home with my bag of shiny pennies and penny candy. She would call my mother to come and get me.

My grandmother made a lot of dentists happy. Whenever I ran away from home, which was often, I ran to her. Her unwavering love for me saved me in many ways.

For nearly a week now, I’ve been mostly confined to the living room and under strict orders not to move or put any pressure on my foot, at least until today, when I visit the surgeon for the first time since the surgery.

Maria, not a caretaker by nature or disposition, has been heroic in helping me bathe, get dressed, ice my foot, keep it elevated. She policed me aggressively, stopping my scores of efforts to escape, drive, go for a walk, or go and throw the ball for Zinnia.

But the good caretakers have a predisposition for the work Maria doesn’t have. After a day or two, she gets claustrophobic and starts thinking of all the art she could and should be making. Her looks get steadily less loving and a bit edgier and more restless.

She starts gritting her teeth and trying to be gentle. I know the caretaking time is rushing to a close, which is fine by me. If I time it right, I can get her back to her studio before trouble happens.

She didn’t start to get edgy or impatient until the weekend, which was terrific. While tending to me – the tone in her voice was changed in style from sweet and caring to “what-the-fuck-do you want now?’ She never says it, but the message was clear. She was happiest when she was designing the art for the photos in my recovery journal all week.

(Minnie Cohen, left, don’t know the identity of the other woman. I’m sure she was a relative. Minnie made wonderful borscht)

She was trapped, I couldn’t be left alone yet, and she was slowly going mad without her work. I admired her for this, but also braced myself for what was coming. It just didn’t come in any way I expected

Sunday, she said she was thinking of my grandmother – Minnie Cohen. I should say that my grandmother did not hold Christian women – shiksas, as she called them – in the highest regard when it came to cooking or housecleaning.

She warned me repeatedly not to marry one, they do not, she cautioned, take good care of their men.

She didn’t live long enough to know I married one, but I took Maria to her gravesite in Providence to introduce her and assured my grandmother that Maria took wonderful care of me and also had her own life as an artist, something perhaps unimaginable to Minnie Cohen from Kiev.

I had the sense she approved though, mostly she wanted me to be happy and if she knew I was, that would be okay.

Over the weekend, Maria who had heard the borscht story several times, got it into her head (without telling me) to make some borscht as a healing gesture and something my grandmother would have done. I was wary when I learned of this, my grandmother had an even lower opinion of gentile women’s cooking than she did of their housekeeping.

To be honest, I do most of the cooking in our home, Maria doesn’t like to cook and she really doesn’t like to do housework. I’m not sure how Minnie Cohen balanced art versus good food and a clean house, but I can guess. And I know Maria – she would be competing with Minnie Cohen’s ghost, even if she didn’t know it. She didn’t like being second to anybody, and she was very diligent about caring for me, at least at first.

Challenging Minnie on borscht is brave,  a big order for a shiksa.

During the week, I saw Maria getting increasingly agitated, irritable, and snarky.  This began in small, barely noticeable ways, but I could feel it. Cooking borscht all day was not her idea of a meaningful life. The thing is, she never stops loving me.

The problem comes because she loves me a lot. Taking on Minnie Cohen’s borscht is like my taking on Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It can’t work.

The borscht was not going well. It look strange and smelled funny. I had the sense it had gone off the rails somewhere.

She was getting angry at the thought she had wasted a whole morning. I asked her where she found the recipe – she had gone online – and had this queasy feeling she was looking at the wrong borscht.

And I could hear my grandmother asking while shaking her head, how could your wife possibly know what good borscht was? She was a goyim, a shiksa.

The recipe seemed to be very different from my grandmother’s and it sure smelled different. I politely told Maria that the small was off – she was already talking about feeding it to the chickens. I tasted it and it was quite awful.

Maria’s mood was plummeting, she is fiercely proud of the work she does, and the fact that she might have screwed up a borscht soup was not a small thing.

She would come into the living room while I was reading and say “what?” as if I had asked for something. After the surgery, she gazed lovingly at me as if I were an angel. By Thursday, she looked at me as if I had fallen out of the back of a horse.

She is not used to failing at anything and rarely does. I think she was also out of joint at the idea that my grandmother, who I loved dearly, could make borscht soup – not the most difficult soup to make – and she had blown it. Maria says she never expected to make better borsch than Minnie, but I’m not sure she means it.

From the smell of her cooling soup, it became clearer by the minute that this wasn’t working, and yes, instead of making quilts and potholders she had spent hours making borscht that didn’t work and that I obviously didn’t like and that she was already planning to feed it to chickens, something that would have absolutely horrified my grandmother.

Maria, the sweet person,  had been preparing this surprise for days, stockpiling the ingredients she was told online she would need. Maria the artist was already going mad from a week of icing my foot and bringing me things.

I assured her my grandmother would love the idea of her making borscht for me.

She sat down and decide to channel my grandmother. She got a cryptic message from her which said simply, “beets saved us” but she didn’t get any approval, absolution, or encouragement for her soup. It was as if my grandmother was blessing the enterprise, but not stooping to help out. Perhaps she didn’t want Maria’s soup to be that good. She was just as touchy as Maria.

By now, Maria looked both angry and miserable. This was looking bad for my weekend.

She kept asking me for my opinion about her borscht, but I could try to hide them. It was inedible, perhaps the ultimate example to my grandmother of shiksa cooking. Besides, I’ve never cooked borscht.

The final surrender came when we got home from taking a drive, I was checking my e-mail in the car and I heard Maria shouting something at me. “See!” she said grimly, “the chickens love it.” And they did, they loved the smell and devoured every drop.

I had a flash. Look, I said, let me go online and find a recipe that looks like the borsch my grandmother made. I was getting a little desperate, I was running out of time. Maria is not the most patient person in the world, and she has absolutely no patience for failure. I was running against the clock.

Warily, she agreed. Just one more time. This is a good thing, I said, I love that you’re channeling my grandmother.

I saw all kinds of recipes for borscht, from Ukrainian borsch (beef shank and cabbage) to Classic European borsh (ribs, potatoes, olive oil.) Some borschts had salt pork and potatoes and some, like the one Maria cooked, emphasized cabbage. It was cabbage, in fact, that I smelled. I hate cabbage. I also smelled onions. Her soup was thick and heavy.

I googled “Jewish Borscht” and hit pay dirt instantly. I could see from the photos that I was looking at Minnie Cohen’s borscht, made in the simpler, vegan, Jewish way.

The recipe offered by kosher.com was it, I just knew it: four fresh beets, 1/2 an onion, one and a half teaspoons of salt, a tablespoon of sugar (we would use honey), a tablespoon of lemon juice, and a cup of sour cream.

I was sure that was it.

Maria grabbed the phone and disappeared into the kitchen. About an hour later, she came in and asked me to taste her borscht, which had just come off of the oven. I saw the chunks of beet were too large, but otherwise, it looked and smelled like my grandmother’s borscht.

I did need some seasoning, which she already knew. She informed me testily that she wasn’t done yet. I fled the kitchen. She’s got to get back to work, I thought.

I tasted the borscht. It was perfect, it was just like my grandmother’s.

We went to bed, Maria had little to say and she fell asleep as if she had been drugged.

She put the soup in the refrigerator to cool and we tasted it again this morning. She nailed it. I looked up at the ceiling and saw my grandmother smiling and nodding. “She’s all right, this one,” she said, “for a shiksa. You are happy.” Bless you, I whispered back. I am happier than I have ever been.

This morning, I told Maria she was banned from caretaking all morning until we had to go to the doctor’s this afternoon. It was time for her to get back to work, I said. I could take care of myself and if I needed anything, I could just text.

She nodded, no argument. I’m eager to have the borscht for dinner. I will say this. I know it will be good, but I will love it either way. I love Maria for who she is, there is nothing I would change.

She got me through the worst of it like Mother Teresa.

I think her plunge into Jewish borscht and Jewish lore – the challenging of the grandmother was amazing – reminded both of us once again of who she is and who she isn’t.

She is an artist, first, last, and always.  She is a Sicilian, which means she might even get jealous of a deceased Jewish grandmother.

The idea of Maria’s life was beyond my grandmother’s grasp or imagination. Giving Maria the nod was generous for her and more than enough. She just couldn’t bear to say it to Maria’s face or in her head.

I’m very much looking forward to having borscht for dinner tonight. I will love it.

And Maria’s wonderful caretaking is over. She lasted a whole day longer than I thought she would. As I write this, she is happy engaged in making a new quilt and selling out her potholders and yarn. I can tell she is loving me again.