Kitchens are a big part of life. Embraced or shunned, neglected or over-indulged, have order or chaos. They’re small and cramped with little counterspace or spacious and roomy with pantries and cupboards galore. They’re rooms with great potential or activity or just used for meal prep. For me, a kitchen is possibility and contemplation, where my favorite people, things and feelings about them, converge.
I’ve enjoyed about a dozen different kitchens so far. Most have had gas stoves; a tiny four-burner I used during an academic year in Madrid was fueled by a giant orange canister that had to be lit with a match. I was so afraid of blowing myself up, I used it just enough to boil pasta and learn the fundamentals of tortilla espanola, a simple omelet of egg, potato and onion. I have appreciated the ease of gas lines ever since.
One of my favorites was a south-facing one in a little 1920’s bungalow on Altgeld Street. It was my first mortgage as a single professional woman, having recently relocated back home to South Bend from Chicago. My apartment there was a cool, urban kitchen with lead-flaked windownpanes that rattled every time the brown line roared by. But the kitchen on Altgeld, I owned. I invested in the obligatory stainless-steel and packed my cupboards with a jumble of pots and pans picked up from thrift stores and outlet malls; my dishes a mish mosh of the same. Without a dishwasher, I stood at the porcelain sink on scratched up parquet under 80’s track lighting and scrubbed endless dishes after many a hosted meal for family and friends. Long days ended sitting at my counter, exhaling cigarette smoke out the back window while sipping on Beaujolais with just my cats for company. Down the street, I had close friends with their own quirky kitchens and spacious porches where we would talk until the wee hours…but in that bungalow kitchen, I spent a lot of time alone, even though I was cooking for others, pondering being on the cusp of a new decade…my 20’s fading fast. I’ve long since given up red wine and the awful nicotine, but put me in a kitchen, and my mind opens up and runs amok, thoughts untangle and dreams take shape all the while cooking and cleaning up the literal and metaphorical messes of the day.
I like the familiarity and utility of a kitchen, of cutting boards, well-worn and cracked; a garage-sale cast iron beauty, a French press that plunges my coffee, my grandmother’s blue things I use every day: the butter dish, the tall, Ball jars and flowery apron and her mother’s painted blue hutch, heavy diner china and a jumbled drawer of utensils, a brown pottery bowl that a college friend gave me when we parted ways in Bloomington over twenty-five years ago, and the Kitchen Aid stand mixer, who is the decorated general of my kitchen regiment. All these lovely, familiar kitchen things I depend on to see me through whatever life decides to throw my way.
Fifteen years ago a five-disc changer filled my kitchen with music on a loop as I made a deep-dish lasagna to woo my future mate. Today, the brilliant Alexa conjures up music on demand while she secretly records the chatter of kids fighting over Pokémon, asking, “What’s for dinner?” I stand at the corner of my island, chopping and stirring, musing over the menu and the future, thinking about what’s next. Past kitchens may not have adequately prepared me for this more hectic one, but I am terribly grateful for the space and the useful, sentimental things in it. The black slab of quartz that is the island will catch spills and tears and the plaster walls will absorb the laughter and drown out the fighting, but this kitchen, like all the kitchens before it, will continue to inspire, feed and grow my soul.
Music: "Soul Kitchen" by the Doors
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