The aroma rising through the wooden grates had me kneeling on the linoleum to get my nose close enough to take a deep delicious breath of what my grandmother had on the stove in the kitchen below our room. The wooden grate in that old two-story house allowed the heat from the wood-burning stove to wend its way to the bedroom above. Toast. She made toast from bread made with her own pillowy hands. Each slice laid flat on the iron-topped stove. The aroma was like no other that could ever be duplicated by modern day commercial bread in an electric toaster. Those days and those aromas emanating from her kitchen are a treasured memory, beautifully browned and buttered the way I like it best.
This post was inspired by Shawna Lemay’s blog Transactions with Beauty. In a recent post she talks about the poetry of kitchens and I immediately understand that phrase. In honour of Shawna’s beautiful writings on the subject and a question she asks, I’m pondering my own kitchens, past and present.
The kitchen is where:
You will find me always in fine fettle;
I often watch the first light of the day or the flickering warmth of the fireplace in the adjoining living room;
I am a spectator of the natural world through shifting seasons outside my window;
I make our morning coffee;
We discuss plans big and small;
I create meals for ourselves and, with great anticipation, for our guests;
An abundance of joy and laughter has been shared with family and friends while breaking bread;
Like my mother, and her mother, the tradition of canning and pickling continues like a well rooted perennial;
I pore over cookbooks the way my mother always did;
Tears have been shed over failures with pie crust;
I keep my mothers china on shelves next to our ordinary everyday dinnerware;
I cook roast chicken in the blue enamelled roaster in which my mother baked hers;
I make soups the way my mother taught me and remember the glint in her deep set eyes;
My only memory of my maternal grandmother is in her kitchen and always wearing a hand sewn bib apron;
We tell stories over wine with friends. In contrast, it’s also where I daydream or contemplate in silence;
I keep the counters shiny and clear so memories will always feel welcome and the new ones have a surface ready for allowing them to brew.
This poem, first read at Shawna’s website, is being shared here for your enjoyment.
When I Am in the Kitchen
by Jeanne Marie Beaumont
I think about the past. I empty the ice-cube trays
crack crack cracking like bones, and I think
of decades of ice cubes and of John Cheever,
of Anne Sexton making cocktails, of decades
of cocktail parties, and it feels suddenly far
too lonely at my counter. Although I have on hooks
nearby the embroidered apron of my friend’s
grandmother and one my mother made for me
for Christmas 30 years ago with gingham I had
coveted through my childhood. In my kitchen
I wield my great aunt’s sturdy black-handled
soup ladle and spatula, and when I pull out
the drawer, like one in a morgue, I visit
the silverware of my husband’s grandparents.
We never met, but I place this in my mouth
every day and keep it polished out of duty.
In the cabinets I find my godmother’s
teapot, my mother’s Cambridge glass goblets,
my mother-in-law’s Franciscan plates, and here
is the cutting board my first husband parqueted
and two potholders I wove in grade school.
Oh the past is too much with me in the kitchen,
where I open the vintage metal recipe box,
robin’s egg blue in its interior, to uncover
the card for Waffles, writ in my father’s hand
reaching out from the grave to guide me
from the beginning, “sift and mix dry ingredients”
with his note that this makes “3 waffles in our
large pan” and around that our an unbearable
round stain—of egg yolk or melted butter?—
that once defined a world.
I would love if you’d share your feelings and emotions connected to your kitchen. If you write a blog post, please share your link so I don’t miss it.
Sadly, I have no warm memories of my Mom (or grandmother) in the kitchen. Mom had many talents, but she was the world’s worst cook. When I was in college I worked at a vegetarian restaurant. The food there was a revelation for me (it was amazing!). I learned to love curry, homemade soup and salads that had nuts, raisins and a delicious tahini dressing. They also made delicious wholewheat bread. Toast and butter it and you were in heaven!
i particularly love your description of childhood memories with your grandmother. you were able to make me visualize the scene.
all of the images are superb, but as i scrolled through them yesterday on the first read and then again this morning, the Christmas cactus image really captured my attention. it’s so elegant.