Nana’s Kitchen

It was long, dark, and green, until it opened up into two windows facing a garden and a lanai in a space aptly named a breakfast nook.

My memory starts in this kitchen.

With the exception of a few flashes from a cross-country roadtrip, life as I know it began in my grandmother’s kitchen.  My mom, sister, and I lived with my grandparents for a year when I was four and Daddy had just left us for Heaven.

As in most homes, the kitchen was the heart.  Even though it was a cramped epicenter, pies were baked, dinner was prepared, and pancakes were flipped in that galley that also served as the gateway to the backyard.

This is what I see when I close my eyes:

Me standing on a stool to roll out pie crust on the counter.

My cousin and I taking turns stealing cookies from the alluring glass cookie jar that was never empty.

Granddaddy salting his cantaloupe while Nana warmed syrup for pancakes on the stove.

Throwing dolls down the laundry shoot to my sister, each landing hollered up the stairs and witnessed as a miracle.

Watching the oven for hours the same way other kids’ eyes glued to a television set as it performed magic.

Sitting with Nana at the table as a child just home from preschool, as a girl struggling with friends and boys, as a young woman full of fear and excited by possibilities.

It is that table that I long to return to for one last chat.

I would love to hear from my matriarch now that I am a mother.  I used to think that extraordinary life experience could provide the equivalent wisdom of age.  Now that I am older, I know better.  Nothing can replace the perspective that comes from the passage of time.  I long to hear Nana’s thoughts with the ears of a wife and mother in her thirties, rather than a far-flung singleton in her twenties.

I never understood how much choice plays into motherhood.  I always thought taking care of kids was just a mom’s job.  A duty that was clearly defined and easy to perform.  Now I see clearly how the choices we make shape our lives.  Nothing is granted.  Nothing is certain.  I wear motherhood differently than my friends.  Mothers make choices every day, both big and small, that shape our children’s lives.

I’d like to ask her, What did you sacrifice?  More importantly, what did you not sacrifice?

This time maybe I would remember what she said.  At least I’d have the chance to write down her thoughts before they faded.  Even though I always respected her opinion, I can’t remember a single word Nana said.  All my sweet memories of her are oddly silent.

I remember her voice.  I can hear her say my name.  I know the cadence of her breath as she carefully chose her words.  But the words, those precise words, are lost.  My cousin occasionally quotes Nana, a feat that stuns me and makes me jealous.

My memories are alive but quiet, sitting at her kitchen table pouring my heart out and laughing to the point of pee with a sense of timelessness.  She had so many children and grandchildren, but always seemed to have all the time in the world for each of us.  I have only two kids, but constantly feel rushed and pulled, out of breath.

I was welcome to stay in Nana’s kitchen forever, but now I can never return.

Unless…

My sister often remarks that I remind her of Nana.  Is the inner voice that guides me really hers?  Are our identies intertwined?  Were her words imprinted so deeply in my heart that I mistake them for my own?

I don’t know.

Grief, like all aspects of life, is circular.

It is never forever, but it never ends.