Stopping by a Kitchen on a Winter’s Morning
Kate was still in her pajamas, which were actually her husband’s old boxer shorts, when I stopped by at 7:15 am. Her house was on my way home from dropping my son at school. I knew she’d be awake because her husband took the early morning train to the city, and she usually made him breakfast. She’d once brought me a loaf of the hearty bread she served with his over-easy eggs. She was always dropping treats off to me — her peanut butter cookies are my favorite. I was there because she needed some bread starter.
I’d planned to leave it outside her back door. She has a small wicker basket there for deliveries. But when she saw me on the patio, she waved me in. I pushed open the door, a mason jar of fermenting flour water held out in front of me like a ticket of sorts, an explanation of why I was there. She lifted up her hand to touch her still uncombed hair, and I wondered if I caught her off guard or maybe misjudged our familiarity. I realized I had only ever seen her in blazers with tidy skirts, bangle bracelets on her wrist that clanged together whenever she lifted her arm — which was often — because she was always measuring things like spaces and fabric and chairs.
I stood there unable to pinpoint why I felt both nostalgic and awkward as I stared at the dishes on the counter, her bare legs and feet. I could see her toes. She put the starter in the refrigerator, and turned back around, with a container of black bean soup. “Can I give you some to bring home?” My family loves her soup. She never measures ingredients for food but always gets them right.
It had been a while since I was in someone else’s kitchen that early in the morning, witness to the fleeting intimacy where the ordinary feels like a secret.
Her boxer short pajamas reminded me of mornings at my nana’s house. I’d be eating cinnamon toast cut in fours while she stood at the sink, her hair still in the rollers she had slept in the night before. She barely had any hair at all, and this was her little trick to make it appear more full when she had to leave the house for a special event. When I would go upstairs with her later in the morning, I would stand there amazed at how her tightly-wrapped hair looked like feathery cotton puffs when she combed them out. She would let me pat them gently with my palm.
My nana lived in a double house, and there was a connecting door at the bottom of the basement stairs. I loved the woman, Hopie, who lived on the other side. She kept M&M’s in her bottom kitchen drawer. The door in the basement was never locked, and there was a free flow of visits back and forth, early mornings included, though usually they were preceded by a gentle tap on the door before it was opened. I liked the familiarity of this exchange, the humanity that reassured me, the comfort of seeing people in bathrobes where simple trades like a cup of flour occurred as well as community information (Mary was sick again) or the weather (might be a storm, so many birds at the feeder.) There were other houses close by, and it was never much of a surprise to see other neighbors stopping in, as well. I always watched the door with interest from the table, playing with the little address book she kept by the phone. It had a metal slide with an arrow that lined up with the letters on the side. When it was pressed, it popped open to the page of the letter. I played with it every time my nana was busy at the stove.
That kitchen, completely unshielded by barriers of anything (privacy, pretension, door locks) was a little comforting hub and communal exchange that laid bare the shared experience of just being human. Looking back, I think that my nana’s kitchen was like The Velveteen Rabbit, so very real and loved–- the familiarity rubbed to the rawness and beauty of its core.
