The Kitchen Table Stories
Everyone loves to hang out in the kitchen. Everyone loves to eat. Everyone loves a good story.
While my home office on the second floor is beautifully outfitted, while my files and printer are there, the best place for writing is my kitchen table. I can take a break from the laptop to chop onions and garlic for the big red pot where our dinner will eventually appear. I can sit and eat my breakfast at the kitchen table while I'm waiting for the laptop to scan and scour the hard drive and digital files, and I can close my eyes to meditate on the good fortune and abundance in my life.
I imagine your kitchen table is the same for you, a bit messy; a bit overloaded with keys, notes, shopping lists, dinner napkins and coasters. I imagine your kitchen table is also loaded with the history of stories told by children, grandchildren, parents now deceased and good neighbors and friends. The kitchen table, your silent partner in life, has chronicled in its DNA all the sadness and joy of your life, all the cooking and baking and party preparation and all of the secrets and celebrations of your closest and best-loved.
A good friend who lives in Salt Lake City is the artist and writer, Pilar Pobil. She is greatly loved and celebrated. Her paintings hang in homes and in public spaces such as the Humanities building at the University of Utah.
Pilar raised her family around her kitchen table, and to this day, it is still the hub of all activity in her home. In 2007, the University of Utah Press published her memoir, "My Kitchen Table: Sketches from My Life" and so many of the stories that Pilar had shared with her children were included in the interesting and colorful events of her life.
Your kitchen table's stories may not be published, but they are imprinted on your heart and in your memories. I favor the stories with tears and the ones that made me laugh out loud.
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| My Aunt Polly's kitchen table. She loved floral everything. |
A recent kitchen table memory is one that I made with my aunt who passed away last year. This was during her final weeks. Hospice had been called in, my aunt stayed in her bed and wouldn't even let us do anything with her hair, a strange thing for someone who was always impeccably dressed. She was ready to move on and let go of earthly things, but there was a last unbelievably beautiful event for her to attend. With my cousin Soula, and her husband who were visiting, we all sat down to eat a simple Greek meal. Fried pork chops with lemon, pasta with brown butter and cheese and the iconic Greek Peasant Salad. My aunt's caregivers dressed her up: hair brushed and tidied, lipstick on and a pin in the shape of a crown attached to her favorite robe. She came as a queen to the Last Supper at her own kitchen table. We ate, we laughed, we drank wine. My aunt ate with great enthusiasm and pleasure, commenting on how delicious the tomatoes were. She drank some of the wine and asked for more. Due to digestive issues, she had not been able to enjoy wine for over thirty years. On this day, at this table, she drank and ate as if she'd live forever, and as if nothing were wrong. This is a memory that I will be grateful for forever.
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| Olivia reaching for a ball--a roasted potato! |
My husband, Dewey, and I shared a funny one with our youngest granddaughter over ten years ago. Olivia, still in her booster seat, still not able to
group words together and barely past the speaking of mama and dada, was
eating dinner with her sweet little hands. We were eating with our knives and
forks. All was quiet until we heard serious moaning and groaning in
between heavy chomping and juicy lip smacking. Looking up, we experienced Olivia's first foodie
moment as she gave all of her energy to the joy of fresh corn on the cob!
What are some of your kitchen table stories? Would you care to share?
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