**This is a long piece. Reaches 6 pages in Microsoft Word. This is my narrative essay for my English 208 class. The prompt was to write about a kitchen. I thought this was such a dull topic but after some work, I really enjoyed this topic and the theme that grew out of it.
Wonderfully
Ordinary
After walking between crowds of
families with crying children, who are also tired from the busiest of holiday
travels, we finally reach the end of the maze. We sling our suitcases into the
trunk of a car, too fancy to be our own, and drive the rest of the way to our
final destination. Running up the concrete steps, sliding across the icy porch,
I fling open the white creaky screen door. Through the foggy glass on the door, I could
see lights of blue, orange, red, and yellow shining from the Christmas tree in
the living room. I excitedly knock on my grandparents’ front door as my dad
trudges behind, carrying as much luggage as he can in one haul. Out of breath,
he gently pushes me aside as he always did during my younger years, turns the
knob, and opens the door, releasing the warmth into the winter chilled night. I
now understand why this event occurred every year: either my grandparents
wouldn’t have been able to hear my light rat-a-tap-taps over the Seahawks’ game,
or my father didn’t feel like he had to wait to be invited into the home he
himself grew up in.
More so now than ever, I savor the
memory I create when I imagine my father during his college years. A full head
of thick dark brown hair, long and quite reminiscent the Beatles which is
ironic since I know he listened to this band back then. His furrowing eyebrows,
the ones he gave me and the same he inherited from his father, are loosened as
he smiles at the sarcastic comment his mother makes. I imagine my grandmother
is scrubbing the dishes from that morning while this conversation is unfolding.
They both chuckle together as my father nervously attempts to bring up a new
topic. Gracefully, he hops onto the kitchen counter, creating a loud crack
against the bottom cupboard door as the heel of his tennies kick it. Despite
the magnitude of what he wants to say, his voice sounds elated.
“I just asked her to marry me” he
said. My grandmother’s stern pursued lips break into a smile.
“Are you talking about Debbie?” she raises
her eyebrows slightly, glancing up for a moment even though she already knows
the answer. He too smiles as he reaches to his left, pulls the wooden lever of
the M&M dispenser and puts his other hand underneath to catch the falling
chocolates. He pops the handful in his mouth, crunching delightfully.
“Of course I’m talking about
Debbie.”
“You have our approval!” My grandpa
chirps in from the head of the kitchen table, his back still towards the other
two for he is unable to take his eyes off the Perry Mason show.
“Dad, quite frankly, I don’t need
your approval.” My father snaps back with the sarcastic tongue that seamlessly passes
from generation to generation. My grandpa turns around and he too, is infected
by the joyous news.
“This is very true. You don’t need
our approval. Not at all.” I wasn’t alive for this event, or to be more exact I
wasn’t even thought of, but my mother shared this memory with me, just like my
grandma had shared it with her.
There were wonderful moments in my
grandparents’ kitchen. The kitchen itself wasn’t anything out of the ordinary
and the layout seemed typical; the main entrance to the house, the creaking stairs
to the basement immediately on your left, a table with three chairs and a
television on top, a telephone with a curly cord hanging on the wall with cat
food bowls underneath it on the floor, a window above the sink, and a doorway
into the living room. The room itself smelled of time passing, knowing the
floors have endured many footsteps, the burning coils have cooked many entrées,
and the cupboards have held many plates. In crevices where the wall meets the
linoleum there is irremovable mildew, dirt and grime you don’t notice at first
but sense with a house this old. The static hum from the television that is never
off fills the space with cheery tunes wishing one and all a merry Christmas and
briefly convulses as my grandma flips back to the football game, she despises
commercials. She lets out a quick hoot as she tosses the remote onto the
kitchen table because she’s thrilled to watch quarterback Warren Moon play for
a bit. I pretended to be happy too, even though back then I’m sure I didn’t
know the difference between a quarterback and all the other jerseys on the
green turf.
By far, the best aspect of that
kitchen was my grandpa cooking breakfast every morning. Color blind and legally
blind for the last decade of his life, he gauged when the sausage and bacon
were finished by the intensity of sizzling and the mugginess of smoke in the
air. To this day, I love my sausage burnt and my bacon crisp; I can’t imagine
having it any other way. I blame him for making breakfast my favorite meal of
every day at any time.
I admired my grandfather to great
lengths so the smell of his cooking that trickled into the living room, Christmas
morning, where we cousins always slept, was one of the most blissful memories I
can remember. My older brother was more devoted than I was; always awake first,
helping grandpa in the kitchen even if all he was doing was keeping him
company, watching morning cartoons at the kitchen table. As soon as the eggs
were scrambled and the toast ejected from the toaster, the smell reached my
nostrils. My eyes opened instantly, remembering who was supposed to visit my
stocking as I lay fast asleep. After the shredding of ribbons, fancy gift paper,
and shrieking over my new Furby, I finally sat down for the best thing besides
presents; Grandpa’s breakfast.
During this time my family did not
live in the Pacific Northwest. Having been born in Georgia and moving to
California when I was the age of six, the only time I saw snow was here in
Cheney, Washington. Out the kitchen window hung clumps of snow upon the bare
branches. The snow seemed eager to drop as soon as the winter wind blew by and
I imagined the trees playing a game of spatter to see who can hit the most
humans who dared to walk underneath their limbs. Moisture gathered around the
edges of the window as proof that I wanted to stay inside where I couldn’t see
my breath hit the air. Better yet, I stayed inside with the warmth of baked
Cheerios, pretzels, nuts, and Chex mix; my grandma’s holiday treat. In a brown
bowl, I sorted past all the nuts and pretzels and kept my eyes focused on the
best part of the mix: the Cheerios and the Chex mix. Eventually, if all of
those were gone I’d settle for the pretzels until grandma made another fresh
batch.
One year, I remember finding my
mother weeping in this kitchen. The long ginger braid down her back shook with
each breath while finished wiping the dishes from our festive dinner. Once
grandma was unable to cook and wash the dishes, my mother naturally took over.
Generally she can’t sit still for two seconds so she loves to help out in any
way she can, the kitchen being one of her specialties. I never thought anything
of this notion until that Christmas. Unbeknownst to the cousins, occupied by
our uncles and dads who were teaching us how to play poker just like grandpa,
my Aunt Sue was slowly drifting away from our family. After a long night of heated
words and verbal jabs between the adults, I heard my mother tell my dad who held
her by the waist soothingly, “I always do everything around here…” Their backs
were towards me but I could hear the tremble in her voice as she composed
herself.
Looking back most of my memories of
Aunt Sue do consist of her sitting while my mom did all the work each holiday
season. That year Aunt Sue broke our tradition, swooped up her children and
took them and our Uncle Tom to her parents’ house instead of staying the night
with us. This was our last Christmas altogether because Sue divorced my uncle the
following year. However, life was still the same at my grandparents. Every
Christmas Santa still came, grandpa still burned the sausage, and the merriment
of family memories still lived on.
It was when my grandparents passed
away that everything I knew changed. Now living within driving distance of Cheney,
we visited my dad’s parents more often but more notably Christmas wasn’t
Christmas unless it was up there with my grandparents. We never celebrated
Christmas Eve elsewhere. Consequently, when my grandparents passed within the
same year of one another I didn’t know where Christmas would feel right. Even
though my uncle owns the house now, he installed a new kitchen downstairs and
rents the upstairs. Since my grandparents live a couple of blocks away from
Eastern Washington University, he easily makes revenue on students as tenants. The
door my dad freely opened without invitation is no longer an option.
Christmas to this day will still
never be the same. I will never wake up to the smell of grandpa’s breakfast,
eat my grandma’s fresh batch of Chex mix, or watch my mother stand at the sink
in front of the window and wash the dishes. It seems both my parents and I salvaged
what we could from that kitchen. The M&M dispenser my dad grew up with is
now in my parents’ kitchen, my mom continues to cook the holiday Chex mix my
grandma always did, and I work at a breakfast restaurant. Even though I am not
allowed to cook the bacon to my liking, crisply burnt the way grandpa infamously
did, somehow the scent of the restaurant kind of makes me feel like I’m at
home.
Sometimes I have the urge to return to my grandparents’
house, to their kitchen, just to revisit a sentiment of my childhood. But I
can’t. And quite frankly, for my own sake, I shouldn’t. The people who made
that ordinary kitchen special are no longer there. Their lives aren’t busy at
work, doing their normal routines and I don’t know why my heart believes my
brain when it thinks my grandparents are still living there, on the corner of
North 9th and Cedar, and I just haven’t been up to visit them in awhile. Nonetheless,
I have my memories. Whether they are the ones I experienced, the ones my
parents lived through, or the ones my grandparents told from generation-to-generation,
these memories are plenty for me and I will treasure them. I will carry these
moments with me especially as I begin to live in my own house, understanding how
so many wonderful memories can unfold in the most ordinary room; the kitchen.
