Kitchens

It seems to me that many memories of my childhood - and perhaps yours - are somehow wrapped up in food and the place where it was cooked.

My great-grandmother's kitchen was a big sunny place (in my mind, anyway). The window over the sink looked out over a pasture, a creek, and then the woods, climbing up the mountain. It was dominated by a huge wood cook stove, which she used to cook wonderful meals all her life. Papa finally purchased an electric stove, but she didn't much like it. She did cook on it in the summer when it got so hot no one could stand the heat coming from that behemoth in the corner.

I've tried to recall  the kitchen in the house we lived in until I was seven. All I really remember is that you walked through it to get to the really cool screened in back porch that looked out over the top of the back of my grandfather's grocery store. Mother ironed out there in the summer while I played with all my toys, never worrying about making a mess.

I remember when it rained my parents  having to put buckets and pans out everywhere because the roof leaked like a sieve. I can recall squinting my eyes and looking at the single light bulb that hung from the ceiling, and how dreamy it looked as water gathered and then dripped from the fixture the bulb sat in.

May I take a moment to say: Yikes!

There is a picture taken in that kitchen that I've seen more than once. It's of me in my Easter finery standing in front of my daddy, who is sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee. That table is so small it is now the table I use at my bedside, covered in a tablecloth to hide it's identity.

I looked pleased as punch, he looks horribly hung over.

The kitchen in the house I was finished being raised in was in the house my father's parents moved from at retirement to move to the country.

It was an odd shaped room, because part of it had been partitioned off to carve out a bathroom. There was a transom window above the refrigerator, which sat in a little cubby by itself. There was a full size window to the side of the sink, looking out into the backyard. The cabinets, what there was of them, was a mismatched bunch of vagrants.

The first kitchen I had as a married 'woman' (I use that term loosely, I was eighteen) wasn't really a kitchen, just part of the living room. The sink and the refrigerator were on the back porch. It was a hoot having to tote dirty dishes from our table to the back porch to wash them, and durn cold in the winter, I imagine.

I can only imagine the cold, because we couldn't tolerate the many problems that house had, including the shower leaking onto the bedroom carpet every single day. The smell became unbearable, and no one would fix it. So, after three months of marital bliss in that house, which ended in October,(the time, not the bliss - the loss of that came later)  we moved.

I'm in kitchen number nine of my adult life. I hope it's the last one. I designed this kitchen, and I love it. I have been able to upgrade over the years, to make it more like I wanted it to start with, twenty-six years ago. The only thing left to complete my wishes is new flooring, and that will happen soon enough.

It's just the right width, it's long with a big bay window to tuck the kitchen table in, so we can watch all the wild life goings on every day, and  many a meal has been stopped to do just that. I have a walk- in pantry that I love.

But the thing I love the most is it is filled with family, good times, and lots of love.

It even gets cooked in sometimes!

Ya'll will have to come sit a spell at the table. I'll feed you something.

We might even see a bear in the rose garden.

It happens.