Sunday Scribblings - In The Kitchen

Sunday Scribblings has been running for a year! I haven't participated every week, but most weeks, if I've been about, I've tried to post something, and also tried to get to read some of the entries. As time's gone on, there have been more and more, and it hasn't always been possible, but I've met some marvellous people through this group and am hoping this just keeps running and running. Thanks to Meg and Laini for their dedication and hard work in maintaining the site, in coming up with inspiration to offer us and in encouraging writing in whatever form through the medium of something that is so simple and yet so profound in its effects for many of us. Thank you!

This week's prompt is In The Kitchen:

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In the kitchen… right now, disorder and mixtures of aromas. There’s the spice and heat of last night’s cooking. Black lentils and that new Tunisian courgette salad – Aljouk-al-Iforgetwhat. Tasty and sharp with feta crumbled on top. My hexagon-patch crocheted afghan is draped on a wooden frame to dry by the radiator. Two pairs of discarded shoes sit under the rocking-chair – one black, one beige. I am wearing tatty green slippers, with the shape of my feet in them, comfy slippers. Not elegant. The table has gathered the remains of Saturday’s Times, the bits I’ve already read and the bits I won’t read (sport, business). Unanswered letters keep a vase of chrysanthemums company at one end and advertising leaflets on their way to the bin somehow got waylaid here and are taking a rest along with the letters. The sink is (almost) empty, the cooker-top clear. There are no piles of books sitting anywhere, but a few stray boxes, candles, postcards have found their way to the counter, to join the fruit-platter (reduced now to apples and oranges: no banana, no pineapple, no pomegranate). The round gold papier-mache box that holds my angel-cards has one card on top – today’s choice, reminding me to be aware of “Responsibility”. Hmm.

The broken chairs have not yet been replaced, so the table is surrounded by a sorry collection, none of them reliable, and all destined for a visit to the recycling centre very, very soon. Two that were Nana’s, two that came with that ill-fated kitchen set eight years ago. I may tell that story another time, but not now.

The table likes its new position, the angled place we found for it after the new flooring was put in a few months ago. There’s a lovely clear triangle to walk about from sink to cooker to fridge, and there is a flow of air about the table. Here is a place to breathe, even if all is not ordered and clear right now. It’s become a manageable kitchen, a place I like, a room I enjoy working in. It’s mine. It no longer serves as office (despite the letters on the table). The rocking-chair is a spot for the dog to snooze on, rather than one for me to sit in while I read. Now that the house is mine to use as I wish, I read with no intrusion from TV or radio in the living-room whenever it suits me, or on the old couch in my study. The kitchen that once was my retreat, my domain, my sanctuary, is no longer a place in which I spend most of my day, but it is still the place I come home to. When I come home, that’s where I go first. It’s when I take my coat off, and switch shoes for slippers; plug in the kettle, there in my kitchen, that I feel myself to be really, completely, at home.