Dinner is Served
The kitchen as the place story begins with MFK Fisher, Lavinia Greenlaw, Mary Gordon, Diana Abu-Jaber, and Chang-Rae Lee
NOTE: This is just to say that sometimes it feels absolutely—is there a word?—to be posting literary craft and personal stories at this time in this world. I almost pulled this one off tonight, before its scheduled release. And then I thought that perhaps a few of you might take comfort from remembering the stories of your kitchens. I hope that is the case, and I hope this piece will help. And so …
My mother was a talented, instinctive cook—pinwheel cookies I never understood the math of, roast beef that cut like filet mignon, lemonade with a spritz of orange tang, carrots as good as candy. When she was in the final stages of her final illness, I understood, among many heartbreaking things, that I would never again watch her lean down and peer into her oven to check on the dish of the hour. I knew, too, that when it came time to pack up her home, I’d have the hardest time among her recipes and teas, pots and pans, those notes she wrote to herself that blurred with water drops and time.
How do you put all vestiges of your mother’s cooking away for a last time?
So many family stories begin in the kitchen. So many lives are shaped by what is baked, served, talked about, talked over. For our first five-day workshop at an old farm, I asked each participating writer to send us 300 true words inspired by a memory of a kitchen. Old arguments, new achievements, lingering questions all appeared. The food was there. But so was the life.
MFK Fisher was a traveler, writer, and original foodie. In her essay “The First Kitchen” she introduces the early family cooks who swayed her. In “Grandmother’s Nervous Stomach,” published in 1971, Fisher reveals the silver lining in her strict grandmother’s habits, writing of that time when her grandmother’s somewhat-suspect nervous stomach forced the family to “eat tasteless white overcooked things like rice and steamed soda crackers in milk.” Bland meal followed bland meal until that grandmother slipped away for, say, a religious convention. That’s when the family went wild for the good stuff. When the family, in Fisher’s telling, became itself.
“No more rice water, opaque and unseasoned, in the guise of soup,” writes Fisher. “No more boiled dressing in the guise of mayonnaise. No more of whatever it was that was pale and tasteless enough to please that autocratic digestive system.”
As the dishes brightened, so did the family. Fisher’s parents’ postures softened. Fisher’s mother would, she writes, “lean one elbow on the table and let her hand fall toward Father, and he would lean back in his chair and smile. And if by chance my sister or I said something, they both listened to us. In other words, we were a happy family, bathed in a rare warmth around the table.”
Deliciousness changed the conversation. Spices and culinary style reminded the family of the fullness of life—and allowed them to live it.