Come with me and
Listen to a story
Of birds and trees
And bumblebees
Of children dancing
In the rain
And the love of
kittens and of dogs
Of kitchen tables full of food,
Of laughter and of love
And all these things
Go round the world
With different songs
Afnd dress and voice.
We live, we love, we cry
No matter where we live.
“Stories are important, the monster said. They can be
more important than anything. If they carry the truth.”
~ Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls
frayed sentences drift
a word ~ maybe two
for something I’ll write later
vanished in pumpkin soup
bubbling on the stove,
in the flour and nuts for
bread dough rising;
in the brutal wind,
on my way to take out the trash
scribbled down on a note
lost on the kitchen table.
I’ll clear off the table tomorrow………
“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could.
Learn from it…tomorrow is a new day.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
A delicate, orange thread of yarn magically took me tumbling through the decades to my grandma’s kitchen. That ball of orange yarn, all the way from Sweden, knitted or crocheted into a hat maybe, possibly edging on a scarf was paired with some random cotton for a dishcloth, and I remembered Grandma and her kitchen.
Grandma was from Sweden. She pronounced my name like no one else ever has, her Swedish accent all but vanished, but slipping out when she said my name.
My name felt special. Teaching me
how to say 'thanks a lot' in Swedish ~
‘tack så mycket ~ was fun. I still love
the way it rolls off my tongue.
Sometimes I say it just for the
feel and sound of the past.
African violets on the glass shelves
in the window threw prisms of sunlight
to sparkle the spotless kitchen. Grandpa’s
old rocking chair waited for Mrs. Van
to come for coffee. Always a fresh table
cloth in her neat and tidy kitchen. Her
old linen table cloth with the apples and
vases and a brown singe in the shape of
her iron in one corner is kept ironed and
folded. The thin spots in the fabric are
like these memories, and just as precious.
“No memory is ever alone; it’s at the end of a trail of memories,
a dozen trails that each have their own associations.”
~ Louis L’Amour
The tea kettle whistles
bacon sizzles and spits
potatoes boil over and hiss
soup bubbles in a whisper
The bread smells done
coffee beckons and I obey
Butter is browning and
hurry up it smells burnt
Oven calls out ‘I’m hot’
Kitchen timer jangles
Mom or a sister joins in to
remind me to stir the soup
From great distance to my
kitchen, family memories sit
on my counter, rest in a tea cup,
as though we never left home.
“The kitchen is a sacred space.”
~ Marc Forgione, chef
Topical issues are only a flowery surface
in beeps and bytes ~ to get to the roots
below the rhetorical chatter we have to get our hands dirty, get out the spade and the hoe, or stay home and enjoy the flowers. I’ve seldom been a very successful gardener, and never a politician but I do have opinions that are just that ~ opinions for a round of kitchen table discussion that drains the coffee pot and chews the fat of an evening unless someone changes the subject to something shallow like the fanciful Oscars fashions, the latest Iron Man movie or a Margaret Atwood novel favoured by a salesperson. That’s when the discussion gets seriously hilarious,
clearing the kitchen table of any crumbs of topical issues.
“‘You is trying to change the subject,’ the Giant said sternly. ‘We is
having an interesting babblement about the taste of the human bean.”
~ Roald Dahl, The BFG
over saucy ribs and watermelon,
a quiet visit with Russ and Fenna,
stories curled,
wandered into the night.
“Everyone visits with each other for its purpose.”
~ Ehsan Sehgal, Dutch-Pakistani poet
Every big idea is made better with food. The idea this weekend is, for many, a family gathering on this Thanksgiving. My challenge? Bring cabbage rolls, a dish I have made maybe once, on my own, in the last forty years. I approached this….this intimating challenge cautiously. But dammit! I would make them and do a good job! From cookbooks and YouTube videos, I researched what was needed. Purchased the groceries needed. Cleared my kitchen. Gathered my tools and ingredients. And then, something interesting happened. I slipped into ‘the zone’ as I cooked brown rice, chopped onions and garlic, parsley and celery, measured out dill weed and smoked paprika and made tomato sauce. Over a dozen cabbage rolls later, tucked in and covered with bacon, they went into the oven for a two hour bake. I did reserve one small piece of filling and cooked a tiny meatloaf to taste the finished product. The flavours are quite good - but I’ll wait till tomorrow to get more objective opinions.
“….no one is born a great cook, one learns by doing.”
~ Julia Child, My Life in France
I just couldn’t take it anymore. More boxes dragged across my kitchen floor, my favourite floor mat rolled up and put away……..everyday it’s something. Now, I’m a patient cat. My human has told me that more than once. But there are days, and this is one of them, that I just decide to give up. I’ve climbed all over the boxes because I’m just curious. Curious about what might be hiding in there ~ nothing I could sniff out, see or hear. So today, I just stretched myself out in the sun, closed my eyes, and went to sleep.
“Cats are a mysterious kind of folk.”
~ Sir Walter Scott
Distraction
“Open air, whether in deep forest, widening prairies, or bottomless ocean….. - Mom!” Clayton's orange hair was a mess. In frustration, he finger-combed his hair, pulled on his ears and crumpled page after page. “Mom! I just can’t get this right. Can I read it to you and you tell me what you think?” Yelling from his room down the hall from the kitchen, he hoped his mother would help him out. Actually he hoped she would call him to bring his work into the kitchen. He was about to call her again when his wishes were granted. Rubbing his hands, he leapt from his chair. Grabbing up his notebook, he stepped over his gym bag, kicked a few crumpled pages aside, he called out “Coming!”His mother finished the last of the dozens of cookies she had been making. She shook her head and smiled. Pushing a few stray brown curls back from her forehead, she surveyed her work - and the work ahead of her. “Clayton, Clayton, Clayton….here. Let me read that - Open air, whether in deep forest, widening prairies, or bottomless ocean…It looks all right to me….Clayton, stop eating my work!” She caught him just as another sugar cookie disappeared into his mouth. “But mom, they’re my favourites. I love sugar cookies. Are you going to decorate these?” His mother smiled behind her eyes. “Sugar cookies your favourite? I thought your favourite were the Ginger Chews? Or was it those oatmeal/raison cookies?” She whisked a tray of cookies out from under his grasping fingers. “Now, I’m not the one you should be talking to. Talk to your father. He’s the English Major, and never lets either one of us forget it. But he does know more than I do.”
“But I don’t like talking to dad about my work. He gets all into his teacher mode and asks me what I think is wrong, then tells me I’m wrong about what I think and besides that…….” His mother interrupted. “It’s Saturday, he’s in the garage working on his 1960 Mustang. He wants it ready for the Christmas parade next week.” While she talked, she prepared a small plate of cookies. Picking up a thermos from the cupboard, she handed both to her son. He quickly stuffed his notebook under his arm and took cookies and thermos from his mom. “What’s in here? Coffee for dad?”
“Yes and he’s got sodas in his little fridge out there. Go. Go. I’ve got to get the frosting on all these cookies now, get them packaged for the bake sale and get them over to the church…Go!”
“All right, all right! But if dad gives me a hard time…….” Clayton disappeared out the back door still complaining, but glad he had the cookies.
~~~~~
“Open air, whether in deep forest, widening prairies, or bottomless ocean…” His father was no help at all. But they did have a good discussion about horse power. There were no cookies left. Wiping his hands of cookie crumbs, his dad said. “I’m not being a teacher today, son. You’ll have to figure it out for yourself.”
“Distraction from distraction by distraction.”
~ T.S.Eliot
A few days ago, I wrote about my dishwasher overflowing. That led to washing parts of the kitchen floor, which led to the digging out dust and dirt hidden in corners, which led to getting behind the refrigerator and the stove to catch and confine dust bunnies and just plain dirt. I’ve many time declared how I dislike housework. That has been a bald face lie. What I’ve not liked about housework is scheduled housework. You know, Monday - laundry. Tuesday - ironing. All the way to every Saturday morning - take out all the silver from the china cabinet, clean it with silver polish and toothbrush, and polish it til it shines!
Today, as I pushed things around, washed and polished, mopped and scrubbed, and ferreted tiny bits of dirt out of corners, I realized that I was doing something that I’d long not recognized. Being engaged with my home and my life. I know some of you are rolling your eyes about now, deciding I have positively lost it. But I’m quite serious. I enjoyed - no, relished the detail of each task. The resulting cleanliness and order left me with calm satisfaction and just a tiny bit of pride.
I’m not finished in my kitchen. It does not sparkle quite like the waters in the photo beside this little essay. The stainless steel of the appliances do have a lovely sheen and the oven has been cleaned inside and out. What’s left? Cupboards and drawers, inside and out - some have been done, but the rest still need my engagement with my home. Oh, yes, of course finish mopping the kitchen floor.
“The objective of cleaning is not just to clean, but to feel
happiness living within that environment.”
~ Marie Kondo
~ the carpet
alert to my tiniest movement
~ toward the kitchen
Innocence lost
~ in the kitchen
alert for wayward scraps
~ until all the food’s put away.
Innocence rests
~ on the nearest cushion
to nap, to sleep
~ until time to prowl.
“Like all pure creatures, cats are practical.”
~ William S. Burroughs, The Cat Inside
Sagas and legends told ‘round campfires and kitchen tables,
translate into novels, movies and family secrets.
Threads and tapestries
of lives lived, wanderings wandered, fiction and fantasy thru' history ~ birth to death
may not be sensational
filled with deep poverty or opulent riches
but just with day to day awakenings
to arise at sunrise, say good night at sunset.
To feel the joys of family or
the sorrows of family or ~
probably both of no great consequence
to none but the person of the moment
Legends with gold and black threads,
truly lost in the mists of storytelling,
are trumpeted and embellished until
only heard as fiction or fantasy
but stories nonetheless ~
stories that excavate the past to show us
where we have come from ~
giving us a map to show mistakes or opportunities.
Our personal stories,
one crossing over the other
colour and texture our days and
whisper dreams through our nights ~
Sagas and legends told ‘round
campfires and kitchen tables,
warm fictions and fantasies
from sunrise to sunset.
“An actual saga demands change, both in its characters and its world.”
Katharine Kerr, novelist
“The truth about the life of a man is not what he does,
but the legend which he creates around himself.”
~ Oscar Wilde
