booandbunny

Watching her cook with her grandmother, I couldn’t help but smile. At 4 she was ready to prepare a four-course meal, or so she thought. Whenever she can, my daughter loves to help in the kitchen: setting the table, pulling ingredients from the shelves, stirring, counting, clearing the dishes after dinner.
But when she’s with Grandma, that’s a special thing. Firstly, Grandma lets her do much more than I do. Secondly, that time in the kitchen is a gift that will last her entire life.

I still can see the curtains fluttering in the rural Illinois breeze. It’s 5:30 in the morning, and Grandpa is having his obligatory bowl of cereal. He sits at the two-ton table, which stands center in Grandma’s kitchen.
When I think of her, that’s where I see her. Standing over the stove, standing over the sink, on the phone with the cord stretched across the room. Usually it was unbearably hot in there, no air conditioning and we always visited in the heart of the Midwestern summers. Sometimes she chuckles, sometimes she talks back, but mostly she just listens to the Polish radio station out of Chicago.
Chicago.
My grandparents got out of the city, leaving the South Side during the White Flight of the 1960s. But getting the city out of my grandparents was impossible. First generation Americans, children of Polish immigrants, they were as Chicago as you can get.

“OK, Peanut, I’m ready for you,” my mother-in-law says one July afternoon. The two had gone with the rest of the family to pick peaches earlier that day in the oppressive heat and humidity that is St. Louis in the summer. Now that the peaches were peeled and sliced, the cooking was pre-schooler friendly.
“I need your big footstool, Grandma,” Peanut says, having done this before.
Once in place, she’s giddy with anticipation. Grandma explains what they’re going to do and Peanut listens intently. She follows instructions to the letter.
Grandma started baking with them when they were about 2 years old. She kept it simple, ready made dough she sliced and they helped her place on cookie sheets. Grandma doesn’t limit the cooking to the girls, either. Her grandsons are more than welcome when willing.

It’s Thanksgiving, and the tiny house in farm country is filled with South Suburban Chicagoans, each with that trademark accent, all of them Bears fans. Ditka’s in charge and hopes are high, but not as high as the expectations for dinner. It would just be a few hours before Grandma’s stuffing hit the table.
The kitchen is the heart of the home and it’s rare to find Grandma anywhere else. She sits at that formica table to do just about everything: read the paper, write letters or lists, clip coupons, play cards with family or friends, have a cup of coffee.
Like most homes built in the 1940s or 1960s, the kitchen is a self-contained room, not open to other areas like so many kitchens built today. And Grandma’s is big. With the right number of tables and chairs, she easily seated about 15 for Thanksgiving dinner.
The stuffing pan is all but picked clean. All that remains is a mountain of dishes … and no dishwasher. Grandma, my mom and my aunt start cleaning up. I grab a towel.

Peanut’s at the opposite end of the house when she hears the timer beep. She starts off at full speed, until she’s reminded to walk in the house. She watches as Grandma removes seven individual peach cobblers from the oven, and checks on them periodically as they cool.
“We’ll scoop out a hole and fill it with ice cream,” Grandma says. “How does that sound?”
A beaming smile is her only response.
Unfortunately for Peanut, Grandpa grilled steak and there was fresh corn and tomatoes for dinner. She’s too full to eat much cobbler.
Ah, late July in the Midwest.

Grandma usually found something for me to do, even if it was just to sit and watch. I remember helping her with a Polish pastry cookie. I had to keep my distance during the frying, but when it came time to sift the powdered sugar, the job was all mine.
I loved those cookies.
The kitchen was the heart of her home. From there all good things came: food, family, traditions, memories.

Family treasures come in all shapes and sizes. Many are those memories… sifting powdered sugar, my daughter’s cobbler.

When I was in Chicago for Grandma’s memorial service I took time to flip through her recipe boxes. I could see her hands … the wear and tear of a life in the kitchen, the solitary sparkle of her wedding diamond.

The hours those hands spent perusing the boxes were evident. Tabs are missing or nearly broken off the dividers. Some cards are stained, a few sport her fingerprints. By far the majority of the recipes are methodically typed onto the cards, but many are clippings glued with trusty Rubber Cement. Inside each lid is glued a series of tips and shortcuts.

She had two recipes for those Polish pastries and four for poppy seed roll, but there’s no trace of a recipe for her stuffing.

“Please don’t tell me you cook dinner for three kids every night,” a co-worker of my husband’s said to me shortly before Grandma died. Her statement made me a bit uncomfortable, but I answered truthfully.
“I do.”
I’m a stay-at-home mom on a budget. Less nutritious fast foods are more expensive than what I cook.

It’s rare when I let the kids do too much. Usually they get to put away ingredients or set the table. But they see me cooking … and they learn.

Cooking with your kids doesn’t have to be complicated. It doesn’t have to be planned. Let them pull stuff off the shelves. Let them set or clear the table. Let them get messy. Let them cleanup. Let them decide the menu. Let them watch … and they will remember.

Who do you think you are pulling me from my bed in the middle of the night? My eyes squint, my body coils up, resisting the beams that pour forth from the computer screen. Would that my hands could keep up with you! I’d answer your call with pen on paper by candle flicker.

But once uncaged you’re a bit vengeful … perhaps angry with me for ignoring you so long. So you spit forth your retaliation, sometimes in a venomous rage that leaves me sleepless for days. I suppose I deserve it.

I mean, who else in my life would I dare to shut out in such a fashion? If my child wakes me in the night I rise and give full attention. If my lover rolls over to me in the darkness I awaken and respond. If my employer rings my phone I immediately take action. If a friend in need knocks at my door I open my home. You are all of these things and yet I feel no guilt in turning my back on you. I would never think of putting any living thing in a box so stagnant, so soundproof, so tight that I could only hear it’s distant cries through the strange silence that is a suburban weeknight.

So I can forgive you for tormenting me these past days in your newfound freedom. All these weeks of my bemoaning your departure must have been extraordinarily exasperating for you, considering I had packed you up and put you away. Imagine my surprise when I found you there in such deplorable conditions!

a steel box

sealed shut

wrapped in numerous blankets

so as to stifle your cries

tucked in a dark corner.

My inspiration stuffed in storage because I was too busy living to make time for myself. But life was gray and robotic with such a colorful creature caged.

Starting out with this I thought of so many comparisons: a pesky mosquito; a seduction; an unrelenting master. But my inspiration is more of a dog on a leash. Sometimes it’s pulling me somewhere I’ve never been. Sometimes I’m pulling it back on course. Sometimes it runs off or I ignore it. And sometimes we just stroll while I sip a latte.

P.S.--click on the photo for the link. Click here for more on inspiration.

And I'm certainly not the type who can hang out and do that kind of reading. But I know a good card when I see one. And I know that it's the most Nietzsche I'm ever likely to read, so as the muse is again tickling my brain and the bright blue spring sky calls me from under a cozy blanket I'm finally (finally!) feeling creative (and productive) again. And so for the weekend I share this tidbit, off an otherwise blank greeting card.

It speaks to me of my creations.

It speaks to me of motherhood.

I can't wait to hear what it speaks to you!

I am far from being a brilliant photographer. I do, however, see things other people might not see. And with my new camera and software I'm seeing even more and having loads of fun. For instance I took this











and with a few pulls and clicks made this





In another program I was able to turn that into these for scrapbooking pages
















This click relieved me of the sadness that the lighting was so poor I couldn't pull out the picture without it becoming astoundingly grainy.











Then this happened.











The words are part of the karate creed. "I come to you with karate. My empty hands. I bear no weapons. But, should be forced to defend myself, my principles or my honor; should it be a matter of life or death, right or wrong; then here are my weapons. Karate, my empty hands."

Then I took my camera somewhere I knew the light would dance and I took this.















Which looks cavernous and intimidating enough. For some I'm sure it's even down right scary. Then I made it this:




















This gives me a warm, fuzzy, kid feeling. And who doesn't need more of that?

With you spilling out of my lap this morning I realized how truly numbered these days are. Gone already are the times of listening to you coo in the baby monitor. Gone already are the days of your regular 3 a.m. crawl into my bed. Gone already are the morning snuggles. You turned 6 Saturday, en route to the autonomy that will be yours this fall when you go to school all day long.

With you spilling out of my lap this morning I put my nose in your hair and drew in a long breath. Yes, you still have that clean smell of a little little boy, not that sweaty, outside combination of a young boy and his dog.

With you spilling out of my lap, I wrapped my arms around you tighter and you turned so your cheek was on mine. Those big brown eyes soon stared up at me as though I were the most amazing woman on Earth and I said: “I love you.” And you kissed my nose and slid from my lap and were gone.

How truly numbered these days are.

“Mommy, can you help me?”

Yes. Let’s build some Legos.