Amelia's Kitchen

Amelia wore her own hand-sewn cotton aprons that tied simply around her elder expanded waistline.  The white ruffles added some dimension and bulk to the otherwise two-dimensional frontal wrap.  Floral, mostly—pale colours and large print that somehow represented the utility and beauty of her aesthetic senses.

The kitchen was her center, it appeared—and so it was in her small stuccoed Edmonton home that sat just one house over from the bus route and stop that took her to Kresges and Woolworths for browsing and trinket purchases—not-to-speak of her red and green and the myriad of other colours her miniature hard candy—sitting, once purchased and safely stashed in her home—in little dishes placed strategically on every flat surface in every room—even on the upper surface of the oven. 

Amelia’s teeth were false—no doubt from her daily habit of sucking on her little red and multicoloured candies.

Her budgie bird lived in the kitchen.  Amelia talked to her non-stop and at times it would whistle and talk back eliciting a sweet grandmother smile set upon her lips—a satisfaction that said “well done Amelia. You taught this little bird something in which you, too, can delight.”

For her, the kitchen was practical and very little used—albeit scrambled eggs, day-after-day for husband Franklin when he was alive, and pot roast stews, otherwise.  Iceberg lettuce and mayo didn’t require preparation and the relationship to contents behind cabinet doors seemed of little importance to her. 

The labelless tin can with rusting nail holes in the bottom, which sat in a beige and brown rimmed stoneware dish under the left-handed side of kitchen sink plumbing, was full of bar soap tailings that she saved, grabbed and rinsed under the faucet, shaking gently to release soap suds into her sink when she daily washed her few dishes.  The stamp of scarcity imposed by government-issued coupon-rationing booklets during the World Wars and economic depressions made its way into her habits and choices well beyond necessity.

Franklin went to the doctor one day and came back with a medical pronouncement that sent him chesterfield-bound for the next twenty years until his death.  No one else witnessed this prognosis, but took what he said to be true--and neither questioned it nor challenged Frank, even well into his second decade of lying prone. 

He was a rough old geyser who snarked and barked, but behind this, was a timid man who might just have been afraid--afraid of life, afraid of love, afraid of death.  His sailor language and drunken sprees during summer and Christmas family gatherings sent the children fleeing to the muffling shoulders and armpits of mothers who collected them together as if collecting scattering free-flying leaves in an ocean gale--and safely behind closed doors in hopes of protecting them from the vulgarities to which they were subjected well before their tender ears could process such face-slapping language and behaviour. 

On the off-seasons, when Frank was lying still as a corpse on his sofa, and not the vulgar mouth raging against the world, visiting grandchildren were coaxed into the living room to say “hello” to this unapproachably wispy gray-haired man.  A stubbly face, unshaven and visually rough, clad in fine woolen plaid Pendleton shirts and pants that draped loosely over his thin long frame, Frank laid waiting and still—waiting and still for what always remained a mystery—perhaps for the grandchild who dared approach this man who was supposed to love them, and shower them with gentleness like their grandmother’s kisses, hugs, candies, and warm duvets--or at least this grandfather’s version of love.

Against better judgment, if they could muster up the courage to approach him sideways, arms protecting their slight body, breath sucked inwardly, shaking, sliding quietly toward the stilled figure, hopefully without disturbance, and into the presence of this wisp of a man whose bite could send them running, crying back into the arms of their grandmother--at their grandmother’s urging--as if the behind-the-curtain director for this play called “life” could somehow entice them to bear the hardship that ultimately would crack the nut and reveal the sweet meat for these innocents to taste. 

Back yet again, after his bullying response to the hesitant child’s presence and quivering voice, he would then shift-on-a-dime as if their own courage to return--to withstand his puffer fish rejection and gruffness was the key to Frank’s heart–-to his need to feel loved--so wild, raw and vulnerable that he had to test even the innocent.  Their courage, perhaps the key to assuring his acceptability in their life as they weathered this--his protective facade fell away as smoothly and effortlessly through the child’s ability to withstand his coarseness—like the rock wall that gave way at Ali Baba’s utterance, “open sesame.”  Or when Merlin set the sword in the stone and King Uther Pendragon’s son, Arthur, pulled it simply from its unrelenting grip.

Perhaps his own need to be embraced for all who he was by someone so young, allowed him to release himself from his demons in these moments fully enough to connect deeply with his own vulnerability, and therefore, his love—and curiosity.   From that moment forward, conversation with that child as if longtime friends, flowed with laughter, teasing and joyful companionship. 

The kitchen, though, was Amelia’s practical, functional room, and with Franklin in the living room, this left her a place.  Her place.  And Frank’s was his bedroom and living room.  Amelia found her kitchen a passage way between her outdoors—a garden, flowers and sunshine—a go between from the basement lower apartment where she sometimes had a tenant, and where her Agatha Cristy books lined a shelf over the bathroom toilet and where feather comforters and soft over-stuffed chesterfields and sweet-smelling linens were kept—and the upstairs living room and two match box-sized bedrooms that converged at the hallway to the kitchen, defined the kitchen’s core purpose of flow ever more tightly to its central purpose in her life.

Everything converged here—culinary concoctions, conversation and intentions.  It was the center of her labyrinth through which she walked, daily, inviting her family to the heart and soul of her life.  And she lived it well--along with her husband, Franklin, who died of old age in 1971, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Amelia passed of grief, the autumn 1986.

Kat

24 February 2015