Laurie Colwin was a writer and novelist who was also regularly featured in Gourmet magazine. She once wrote, “No one who cooks, cooks alone…” It’s probably difficult or even non-sensical for some…and I’m going to assume, especially for those that may not enjoy cooking, or believe it’s merely a means to an end, that they have missed the great connection cooking provides to some of the most valuable and important treasures of life. Every one who cooks…cooks with someone. Now, I have to admit, a kitchen can be a crowded place! Ask anyone in my family and they would say it’s probably not a good idea to get in my space when I’m cooking! But despite how that sounds, and probably looks to the family, I assure you that has more to do with logistics and a poorly laid out kitchen…and the apparently unavoidable consequence of getting older and wearing bi-focals, than it is about having people around and enjoying them, and sharing cooking with them! But no matter where I’m cooking, in the kitchen of my house or at the grill out by the pool, I am never alone.
Some of my earliest memories are of my Mom cooking…in the kitchen, wherever our house may have been. My Dad was a Pastor and we moved often as I was growing up. From as early as when I was 4 or 5 years old, I remember waking up on summer mornings to a quite and empty house. I could hear the katydids humming outside and feel the unmistakable, growing heat of the morning sun, its heat beginning to slowly bake the outdoors like an oven slowly rising to baking temperature. The emptiness was not because I was a latchkey kid at 4…there was really no such thing I don’t think in the 60’s…but because Mom had long been in her garden, picking beans, tomatoes, cucumbers and okra…whatever was ripe, or nearly ripe. The kitchen window seal or countertop would soon be the host of all she had gathered. About the only thing that would interrupt the harvest was me appearing beside her…barefooted, in my pajamas, and eager to “help”…at which point she would show me how to pick the right picks until I lost interest. Then, after a few minutes, and hot from the ever rising summer sun and heat, she would ask, “Can I get you something to eat?” And off we’d go, to the kitchen. She’d scramble eggs, cook sausage, take her biscuits she had made long before and kept frozen in the freezer, out and into the oven. Some very special mornings…really anytime I would ask, her biscuits would be combined with one of my favorites…her hamburger gravy! Most of these mornings in my memory were just the two of us…my sisters were in school…summer break had not started yet…and I would sit, and watch her cook…alone.
Very often, around the holidays…Christmas or Thanksgiving…but at times during the summer, we’d take a trip to my Granny’s house in south Alabama. Years later, as I thought about those trips, and I thought about the early mornings at Granny’s house, and the smells of breakfast cooking as I woke and found my way to the kitchen, where Mom and Granny often stood cooking, side by side. They moved and talked and laughed inside the old, wooden walled kitchen, with a wood burning fireplace at one end, and a long, hand made pine table that had benches and ladder back chairs around it. It would seat at least 10 or 12 people, but still seemed somewhat small when all of us gathered to eat there in the middle of that large kitchen. Over those childhood years, I realized that every time I saw Mom cook at Grannys, she was never alone. Many foods she cooked, she cooked for our family because her Mama cooked those foods…and taught her how to cook them. Every sprinkle of salt, dash of pepper…when and how she turned the food as it cooked…or how she smelled the food or tasted it as she prepared to serve it, even the bowls or platters she chose to serve the food in…she did it with Granny right there with her…even when Granny was long gone. Over the years, Mom no doubt tweaked, refined, and added foods that Granny probably couldn’t afford or had no access to in a small farming community…or that her sons and my Uncles didn’t grow on their farm…but in it’s essence…and in all those kitchens, long after Granny had left…Mom never really cooked alone.
Today, I don’t think there’s ever a time that I’m cooking, that Mom isn’t right beside me. I remember far less than I wish I could. I missed opportunities along the way. I miss Mom…all of you who are separated from your Mom, for whatever reason, or from anyone that made your life so special, that made you who your are…knows there’s probably nothing you wouldn’t do to talk with them or stand next to them, or hug them one more time. When in my kitchen, I often wish I could ask her so many things about cooking…about life, about heaven…
But then I am reminded, I may be the luckiest man alive…there in that small, poorly laid out kitchen, Mom is right there with me as I cook…as much as is possible, how she cooked…and for a moment, I’m so glad my kitchen is just the right size, for Mom to stand close by.
