Mama's Kitchen

 

My grandparents were so predictable.  We followed the same script with the same secondary characters every time we were in Mama’s kitchen.  I had had enough, so when I tried to change it up a little my grandmother took me by the hand and sat me down with a cup of freshly brewed coffee and one of her savory pies. 

 That’s how easily she squelched my resistance to the status quo.  How many times had she done that over the years in her cozy kitchen?  By definition that was a rhetorical question.

 She’d lived through two world wars in Germany and had fed more than a few wealthier and better-educated relatives from Berlin, Frankfurt and Stuttgart who had lost husbands, brothers, sons, homes and had to be nurtured.  Her inheritance, these lands with animals and apple orchards, and the house that had a mill, produced eggs, cream, flour and food.   

 Fair trade coffee, you say.  Mama knew how to trade and barter with the best of them.  Berliners wouldn’t have been caught dead bargaining.  “That’s for farmers and laborers,” they said.  She knew they looked down on her while enjoying her tasty morsels and drinking her cow’s creamy milk. 

 “Her chickens lay delicious eggs.  Those apples are so crisp and sweet.  No wonder her pies come so good.”  No, she didn’t want credit or praise.  She wanted the war over and her children to be eating eggs and drinking milk instead of these people who had always looked down their noses at them.  “Eventually,” she said to her daughter, “we’ll be going to America and they’ll be wanting to come to us there too.”

 It should come as no surprise that after she served me in her kitchen, the one in Woodside, everything continued in full swing.  Others were joining me in savoring every bite and sip of warmth on the tongue and in the happy tummy full of contentment that saved my mouth from getting a foot stuck in it again.  Her prediction came true as well.  Many of those relatives did eventually make it to her kitchen in America and were amazed that she still laughed and sang while setting a table for them.

 

Yvonne A.

Jan. 2021