There is a place in my childhood memories sweeter than almost any other — my grandma’s kitchen.

There was nowhere on earth I would rather have been than in my mummi’s warm and welcoming kitchen, learning to bake pulla, that beautiful sweet Finnish cardamom bread whose scent alone can carry me straight back to childhood.

My grandmother, my mummi, was a treasure. Her lovely wrinkled hands seemed to hold a thousand stories — hands shaped by years of kneading dough, caring for family, and quietly carrying tradition forward. As a child, I was captivated by her. I watched everything she did and listened carefully to every word she spoke, because somehow I knew it all mattered.

When I was growing up, I often spent weekends at my grandparents’ home. My siblings and I jokingly called those weekends täysihoito — “full board” — and that is exactly what they were. We were fed, cared for, listened to, and loved completely. My mummi had a beautiful way of making each of us feel like the most important person in the world.

One sunny morning, I remember joining her in the kitchen. The air was rich with the comforting scent of freshly ground cardamom. On her wooden baking board she had laid out everything we needed — flour, milk, yeast, sugar, butter, and of course those fragrant little cardamom seeds.

As we mixed and kneaded, she told stories from her own childhood, about baking with her mother and grandmother, about family, life, and the importance of passing things on. Even as a child, I was fascinated by the way cardamom could transform everything. It turned an ordinary dough into something warm, sweet, and unmistakably familiar. Even now, cardamom is the scent I most strongly connect not only to my grandmother’s kitchen, but to Finland itself.

As my little hands worked beside my mummi’s older, weathered ones, I felt something I could not have put into words at the time. It was belonging. Connection. Love. It was the feeling of being part of something older and deeper than myself, something handed down gently through hands, stories, and shared moments.

When the dough had risen, I watched her shape it into beautiful braids and spirals. Mine were never nearly as lovely as hers, but she praised them as though they were masterpieces. That was her way. She made you feel proud. She made you feel capable. She made you feel seen.

While the pulla baked, the kitchen filled with the most heavenly smell, and the waiting was softened by conversation and laughter. In my mummi’s kitchen, I learned that pulla was never just bread. It was love made visible. It was family, togetherness, and comfort.

Though I did not fully understand it then, I know now that I was receiving far more than a baking lesson. I was being given a heritage. I was being shown how love is passed on in ordinary moments — through food, through stories, through time spent together.

Time has moved on, and the years have carried me far from that kitchen, yet what I found there remains woven into me.

Here in my kitchen in Melbourne, when the smell of freshly baked pulla fills the house, it brings her back to me vividly. Now I find myself baking pulla with my children and grandchildren, hoping to pass on not just the recipe, but the feeling that came with it — the warmth, the wisdom, the sense of belonging, the love.

If I can be even half the grandmother my mummi was, I will count myself deeply blessed.

The memory of my darling grandma is as comforting to me as the cardamom-scented pulla she used to bake. Her wisdom still seasons my life. She is woven into me still — not only in memory, but in the very heart of who I am.