The Kitchen Table

     It’s that time of year again. No sooner has the last piece of pumpkin pie been eaten and we’re on to the obsessive search for just the right holiday gift. But are shiny things bought at big box stores really the stuff of memories?

     For me, my most cherished memories of the holiday season don’t include what I found under the tree, or the fact that I had time off from school, but rather with the gathering of family and friends around our small kitchen table. A lot of life happened at that yellow Formica table. It was where my older sister and I did our homework while my mother made dinner, where we played games on cold winter nights, and where my mom taught me to sew. It was where each evening I would have a snack before bed, and on hair-washing days it was where my sister and I took turns sitting under the big blue bonnet of the hairdryer. That table sat at one end of what I remember as a big kitchen, but with the passing of so many years that I’ve now lost count, I know it wasn’t. It couldn’t have been. The entire house was nothing more than a breadbox.

     When November and December rolled around the kitchen table was the place where we all squeezed together, warmed by the oven cooking the turkey. The smell of my mom’s homemade apple and pumpkin pies cooling on the counter, and the scent of balsam from the tree mingled with the good food and laughter we shared in that small room where someone would tell the same story from the previous year, and we would laugh as if it were the first time we had heard it. Later in the day, after the meal had been cleared and the dishes done, we took out the board games. After several hours of Sorry and Yahtzee, someone would bring out the leftovers and we would start all over again.  

     It’s been many years since I’ve been in that kitchen. These days everyone has a life so full of activities and work that it’s hard to gather at the kitchen table even for an evening meal. But on Christmas day this year, as we’ve done since my nephew was born sixteen years ago, my family and I will gather at my younger sister’s kitchen table to play Five Crowns while we gorge ourselves on snacks throughout the morning. Her table is not yellow nor is it Formica. My mother and I are the only two left from those days so long ago around that yellow Formica table. We are a small family, just seven of us now. But we will gather nevertheless to laugh and eat and reminisce with my sister’s in-laws and have the time of our lives once again.

     So this season as you celebrate the holidays in your own special way, turn off the phone, step away from the computer, and return to the kitchen table and the magic of just being together.

            Happy Holidays -

                   Elaine

 

Can You Make Me Look Like A Super Model?

Once I found out that my book was going to be published I needed to get a photo taken for my Web site and the back of the book. Who knew this would prove to be the most difficult thing about getting published? Personally, I don’t think anyone can take a good picture of me—not that I let anyone with a camera within a mile of my face–but with a book launch looming, I had to do something. In hindsight, I should have become a writer when I was younger and a lot more photogenic, but things happen in their own sweet time.  

So I asked another writer friend where she had her picture taken and she told me and then she told me the price. Being a frugal New Englander I was rightfully aghast. I emailed my sister and she said, come on over and I’ll take a few shots for half that! Kidding, right? She wasn’t going to charge me, was she?

I took my trusty little digital camera over to her house. It takes wonderful pictures of flowers up close, so this would be easy. My sister was otherwise occupied, so next in line was my 10-year-old nephew. A smart kid, and I would get to spend some quality time with him. We went outside and he proceeded to snap photos of Auntie standing by the tree, Auntie standing by a bush. The problem was, while tall for his age, he’s still just a bit shorter than I am so all the photos looked like someone was sitting on the ground looking up at me. Not a very flattering angle, what with the age thing and gravity taking its toll. This wasn’t working so we moved into the house where I sat on the sofa with him across from me. And then he went over to a floor lamp and unplugged it and moved it right next to where I sat.

“What are you doing?” I asked this 10-year-old Richard Warren wannabe?

“Lighting,” he said to me with a worldly air.

I started laughing so hard that we had to end our photography session.

The next week, it was my sister’s turn behind the camera. Again, nothing turned out.

I finally bit the bullet and called the first professional photographer on my list. “We’re going out of business. Closing our store this week,” the man told me. “You should have called sooner.” Yes, I think with a sigh, perhaps about twenty years sooner.

I moved on down the list and called the next photographer in my area. The price for taking my picture would buy me a small car. I was getting desperate with only one name left to call, a woman who conveniently had her studio close to my office. We talked for a bit and she quoted me a price that sounded reasonable. I told her I would check my schedule and email later in the day with some times that would work. I checked my calendar, found a free Saturday morning, and sent off an email with a list of questions—did she think she could air brush me to within an inch of my life, make my eyes look bigger, elongate my neck, and take ten years off my face?

I’m still waiting to hear back.

Ah, Autumn!

Sometime toward the end of August, I start to feel it, that almost imperceptible feel in the air signaling the imminent arrival of fall. I grew up in New England, that bastion of all things autumn, but even here in California, I can tell.

Almost immediately melancholy envelopes me and my mind replays my childhood in vivid hues of reds, golds, and russets. There I am, my ten-year-old self, on my blue bike, peddling through fallen leaves, an apple in my pocket, and the warm sun on my face. I’ll be gone for hours, leaving my family anxious with worry, but I can’t be contained this time of year. When I finally return home it’s to the smell of my mother’s spice cake with the burnt sugar frosting.

If I’m not riding through the country roads of our town, I’m raking leaves into massive piles, sometimes stealing from other yards to make mine the biggest and best. But leaves aren’t the only lure. It is, after all, the month of Halloween; witches and ghosts, a full autumn moon, and pumpkins carved and luminous.

People don’t seem to revel in these simple pleasures anymore. Children prefer to sit in front of glowing screens killing yet another alien from some far off planet. But no matter where I live, in my mind I always return to my roots when the days begin to grow darker and a chill settles in.

There’s a tree in front of my house now, not a glorious maple or a stately oak, but nevertheless it heeds to the season and its shiny green leaves turn to red seemingly overnight. It’s time to take out the Halloween decorations, grab a light jacket, and kick up some leaves.

Happy autumn!