Running to the Kitchen

I used to hate the kitchen.  And I do mean hate.  My mother swears (although I do not remember it this way) that I broke dishes on purpose to avoid having to wash them.  As a teenager I got so frustrated one day trying to peel potatoes that I threw a potato across the kitchen*, tears streaming, just as my Dad came home.  To say he was not pleased is an understatement.  Even now, bread is not something I will attempt – it’s just too much time to spend only to throw away the leaden lump of inedible wheat-gone-bad I inevitably end up with.

And family gatherings drove me nuts as a teenage girl and young woman – after the meal, all the men sat down to the tv and football while all the women went to the kitchen.  Feminist me railed against the injustice, to no avail, as all in my family, women and men alike, just smiled indulgently at my protests and went back to their assigned roles.

But feeding people, I found, is its own joy.  So slowly I learned to cook.  I am a recipe cook, lacking the palate and imagination to venture off on my own very often; what I can do is follow instructions.

Thus have I found my joy in the kitchen, especially this time of year when I bake and create a whole host of goodies for family and friends.  But what I am really seeking in the kitchen is the company of saints.

Yesterday was the funeral for Bill Puffenbarger.  Bill lived to 88 and died much as he lived: quietly at home.  It was a good funeral: well-attended by family and friends, a sunny, although cold day for the interment of his body at Headwaters cemetery, and a good meal after put on by the ladies of the McDowell Volunteer Fire Department.

After the service at the cemetery, I scurried the 6 miles back over 2 mountains to the Fire Hall and helped as I could with the kitchen crew.  It’s not expected of me as the minister.  And most times I simply stick my head in and say a hearty thank you.  But this day I wanted to be with the kitchen ladies.  It was like I was running to them – my own safe haven now in the kitchen I used to hate so much.

Things have changed a little in the kitchens I frequent  – now you’ll find a few of the fellows helping out.  I am a much better cook than I used to be.  And as a grown woman, I know my limits, so I don’t peel the potatoes (trust me, no one needs that kind of grief).

Funerals cry out for life affirming action.  That’s why, I think, we so often gather to eat after.  Eating a meal is an activity of the living – it is life giving as well as life sustaining.

But for me, the funeral meal is a time and place where I can sneak back into the kitchen and hang with the ladies, carrying out the rhythms of millennia.

When I was young, if someone would say to me that I belonged in the kitchen, I would bristle with insult.  Now I just smile and say, “thank you.”  For truer words, perhaps, have not been spoke: in the kitchen, I belong.





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*A leftie with few, if any, motor skills, should really not be left alone with sharp instruments – it really is a right-handed world.