Confines of the Kitchen: For Your Taste

The homemade food, crowded, stuffy kitchens, all the women dipping under arms raised in conversation, squeezing past other bodies in an overcrowded kitchen, others venturing in and ouch with the echo of “How can I help?” The little girls gazing up at the adults, pulling on apron strings, “Can I help? Can I carry the bowl Mommy? Can I stir the pot grandma?” with hopeful eyes that they may be able to contribute in some way. The separate tables designated one for the children and the other for the adults. The aftermath of super, stained lace table clothes from knocked over wine glasses, splotched like tie-dye. Overturned dished and chairs at the children’s table from a game of mid dinner duck duck goose with the cousins. Fragments of pasta salad or smears of chocolate frosting from an aunts homemade bunt cake, piles of dishes growing in the sink and the women left to burry thei

r arms up to their elbows in soapy suds. The children nowhere to be found when it’s time to clean. The men are groggy eyed and sluggish from smorgasbord with a chorus of snoring once the sleep has conquered their eyes. I think that’s how it is.

A shared kitchen, a shared table

Shared conversation, vulnerability left on the tablecloth next to the platter of meat

Secrets divulged over homemade salad dressing, poured on to crisp leaves of romaine, spinach, arugula, an amalgamation of shades of green, of green of life and sustenance.

This is how it would be, if I had a family who roots remained intact and strong. But instead have found something just as resilient. That family comes from what you make it. Over shared dishes and laughter rising into the air from steam and wafts of sweet, honeyed salmon searing in the pan.

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College and its plights of friendships, abandonments and loneliness left a bitter taste in my mouth for most of my time spent there. But perhaps it takes that long to find those who come to define family for you.

I found my family over the smell of roasting vegetables, glasses of wine and music like spires in the air, carried on the heat of the oven.

It’s funny..and inspiring…and intriguing how lifetimes of conversation can manifest over condiments, cutting boards and strokes of quick chopping motions.

The first smells of raw-from-the-earth foodstuffs transforming before our noses instead of our eyes and this metamorphosis of food into dinner ignites familiarity between strangers.

It gave me my family.

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