There is something about the smell of cardamom and cinnamon in the kitchen, and the feel of flour on the bench, that seems to loosen old stories and bring them back to the surface.

When I bake with my granddaughter, I notice that I begin telling her the same stories again. Often with the same details, the same tone, and probably even the same hand gestures.

I tell her about my grandmother’s kitchen, which always felt warm and safe and seemed to carry the smell of yeast and cardamom. I tell her about baking Finnish cinnamon buns with her, about the way she would talk while we kneaded the dough, and about the stories she shared with me about her own mother and grandmother.

Sometimes I catch myself halfway through and think, I have told her this before.

But somehow, it does not seem to matter.

“Did I ever tell you what it was like staying at my grandparents’ house?”

I tell her how my grandfather would be outside polishing his Peugeot, moving slowly and carefully, as though there was no need to hurry. I tell her how my grandmother and I would bake cinnamon buns at the kitchen table or feed the wild birds from her balcony, and how the grandfather clock ticked steadily in the living room, becoming part of the rhythm of those childhood days.

“Did I tell you how we used to watch Little House on the Prairie together because she had a television when we didn’t?”

I would sit tucked beside her on the sofa, completely content, and in the evenings my grandfather would sometimes take out his violin or mandolin and play while I cuddled closer to my grandmother. At bedtime, she would tuck me in and bless me in Swedish.

I know I have told my granddaughter these things before.

And yet I want to tell them again, with the same warmth, as though the story itself is asking to be remembered.

My grandmother did much the same with me. She told me again and again how she began working at twelve, how terribly she missed her mother when she was sent away, how she was teased for her Savonian accent when she moved to Tampere at fourteen, and how she met my grandfather.

I never grew tired of those stories.

They connected me to people and places that had come before me, and gave me a sense of where I belonged.

Over the years, I have come to think that repeating a story is not always about forgetting. Sometimes it is simply about remembering what matters most.

As we grow older, many of the things that once defined us begin to change. Our bodies change, careers come to an end, friends move away or die, and the world around us can begin to feel less familiar.

I see this so clearly in my father. Cycling was such a large part of who he was, and now he can no longer cycle. Advanced Alzheimer’s has taken his storytelling from him too, along with his writing.

I still find myself saying that he “was” a storyteller, and that small word catches in my throat every time.

But before the disease took those things from him, he gave us his stories, and now we carry them for him.

Perhaps that is one of the quiet purposes of storytelling. When parts of a life begin to fall away, the stories remain, reminding us of where we came from, what shaped us, what mattered to us, and who we were.

My grandmother never sat me down and said, “Let me teach you about resilience.”

She simply told me what she had lived through.

She told me what it was like to give birth to my mum in May 1941, in a Finland that had barely caught its breath from one war and was already facing another.

The lesson was there all along, inside the story, although I did not recognise it at the time.

Perhaps this is what we begin to do as we grow older. We pass parts of ourselves on without always saying that this is what we are doing.

A childhood kitchen, a grandfather polishing his car, a blessing whispered in Swedish, a violin in the evening, a young woman missing her mother, a country at war, a father on his bicycle, and a recipe made so many times that our hands seem to remember it before we do.

And now, when I bake with my granddaughter, I realise that I may be doing what my grandmother once did with me.

I am not simply remembering the past. I am passing something on to her — a sense of belonging, strength, faith, family, and continuity — without needing to name any of it.

One day, she may not remember the exact words I used or which story I told on which afternoon, but perhaps she will remember the smell of cardamom, the warmth of my kitchen, the way my hands moved when I spoke, and the feeling of being safe while a familiar story unfolded once again.

And maybe, many years from now, she will find herself baking with her granddaughter and beginning a sentence with,

“Did I ever tell you…?”