How did I end up here? I thought. My hand was on the doorknob that led into the kitchen. I looked back at the door that led out to the driveway, and then the door to the garage. Okay. They’re both locked, I thought.
I turned the knob and walked into the kitchen. The walls were all white. The kitchen curtains caught my eye; wind was blowing them in softly, the hand embroidered cherries and robins lifting up and then drifting back to the windowsill.
I embroidered the cherries. First thing I ever embroidered.
But the window… there was something about the window.
I turned to face the sink. The wooden shelf was on the wall at eye level. The two water glasses sat there, upside down. I smiled. They were a gift from Cousin Steve to my grandmother, brought from his first trip to Hungary.
Those were smashed to smithereens, about 25 years ago.
Suddenly, the significance of the window hit me: My mother had covered the window by placing a big kitchen workspace thingy there, the kind with shelves and doors up near the top.
“I get it,” I said out loud. “I’m dreaming again.”
I smiled. This was my grandmother’s kitchen when it was still her kitchen. I loved my mom, but I hated the changes she made to Grandma’s favourite room. For my grandmother, the kitchen was not about decoration or color, but function. Almost everything was white or steel. When my mother would pick on her for it, my grandmother said that the only colours that her kitchen needed were found in the food she cooked and the people who visited.
The curtains had been my mother’s idea. She sewed them, and embroidered the little birds in a bright blue. I did the cherries under her supervision. It started a lifelong love of working with needles; Ken is constantly sitting on some piece I’m knitting or embroidering or something.
This was how I loved her kitchen. This is how things are supposed to be, I thought. Clean and simple.
When I turned around again, “my” chair was pulled out. “Mine” was the chair closest to the doorway that led to the rest of the house. My grandmother always sat in the one next to it, facing the window.
I sat in it and looked down at the edge of the table. I made that scratch.
When I looked up again, Grandma was sitting in her chair, with a cup of coffee in front of her and a box (more like a wooden mini-crate) of peapods in front of her.
I had not dreamed of her in so long. Months. I’ve missed her.
I smiled when she shrugged. “You don’t come see me, I think something is wrong. I say, ‘she don’t come, I bring her here myself.’ And here you are.”
The sound of her voice, the gentle tone and the thick Hungarian accent, warmed my heart. “Hi, Grandma.” I sounded like I was five years old, and that made me laugh.
My grandmother smiled and handed me the small kitchen scissors, the ones that were always mine to use. I took them from her hand. Arthritis curled those beautiful hands.
“Take these,” she said, tossing a small pile of peapods onto the table before me, “And clip off the ends. See?” Grandma showed me how.
Wait. This is weird. “You never made anything with peapods, Grandma.”
She chuckled. “You ruin your dreams when you say things like that, Vuhn’-essa. Clip off the ends.”
I clipped off the ends of the peapods and listened to my grandmother.
“You don’t cook no more. You don’t feed nobody. How you expect to be happy when you no cook nothing?” she asked.
“I cook a little more, now… especially since we moved in with Ken’s Dad…”
“Tch!” My grandmother tossed the trimmed peapods into the glass mixing bowl. I still have that bowl.
She put the bowl into the refrigerator and came back with a mason jar filled with raspberries. I smiled. The raspberries.
“What is cooking?” Grandma quizzed me.
I blinked.
“See? You forget. Cooking is love, Vuhn’-essa.”
“And food,” I added. My hand went for the jar of raspberries.
My grandmother smiled and swatted my hand. “No. Food is food. Cooking is love. You cook. You feed your family. You give love. Simple… but you forget.”
I leaned over and planted a kiss on her cheek, the soft wrinkled skin close to her jaw, where her birthmark is. I smell lilies of the valley and coffee. “You’re right, Grandma. I forget.”
She shrugged and took my hand. “It’s okay. I remind you.”
I woke up this morning and started writing a shopping list. My husband and my father-in-law are about to begin eating really well… because I love them.
