Nine things in my kitchen

1. A pitcher, gray with four white vertical stripes and one around its belly. In the intervening gray space stacks of thin primary colored lines, here blue, there red, there yellow. Inside stained in warm teal, a cheerful spray of flowers pushing up and out. I bought the pitcher at an outdoor market in Berlin, cheap. To fly with us through a series of sublets, strangers' nests. The start of a portable root system. The flowers came from Tamey, the neighborhood flower-seller with a swarm of bird cages swinging above the entrance to her shop. When I arrived to buy the flowers she was watching cable news. A mother whispered into a faceless white shroud. A family sat down to dinner and their apartment building was struck by a bomb. People convulsed in bottomless grief. Our uncomprehending wet eyes. When I told her that I’d been limiting news-watching her eyes seized mine clear and sharp, you mustn’t do that. The least we can do is know.

2. A baby toy, wood. Two red disks joined by wooden posts painted blue or yellow or green, forming a cage around a silver bell. Easy to grab and rich with the wonder of sound. My father gave it to my son the last time we saw him, said that it had once been mine. My mother corrected, it had been my brother’s. Okay, he said. Fact’s irrelevance in the face of feeling.

3. A white fruit bowl with a navy stripe circling its lip containing two green apples, an avocado, two limes and two lemons. A chartreuse palette. My husband brought the bowl in from the street. We put things out from time to time. A spinning wheel.

4. A deep blue cereal bowl with a chip along its white edge. Rescued from my parents’ basement where the set had rested wrapped and boxed for decades. My mother knew how easily they’d chip into imperfection. How they have now tasted life!

5. A white plastic basket spilling with clean laundry. A toddler’s pant leg in mid-getaway astride one edge. A tiny pair of jeans splayed across a baby blanket and infinite unmatched socks. The relentlessness of householding. Folding, wearing, washing, folding again. Until they are outgrown and donated and replaced. Buddhists bend our forward marching line of time into a circle. Einstein called it a stubbornly persistent illusion.

6. The David Bowie Young Americans album cover framed on the wall. Chestnut hair, aglow from behind, cascading around his handsome masculine delicate face. His arms crossed into a cradle for his chin, left wrist ringed by two gleaming silver bracelets. I cut the cover to fit the frame twelve years ago. Flea market frame, dark wood carved into feathery texture, both heavy and near-flight. The sole survivor of a selection of my parents’ records that I had framed on the wall of a Paris apartment, on the left as you walked through the living room from the front door to my bedroom. The first time I brought home my first Paris boyfriend I gestured to them and said, “These are my friends,” and he said, “Me too.”

7. Thick dark denim children’s apron with a cream-colored belt that weaves through steel grommet holes at the top, crosses in the back and wraps around the waist. Utilitarian front pocket. Shield from countless banana bread and brownie batters. My husband pulled it out of his bag on his return home from a work trip to Portugal. An hour later his colleague messaged a picture of a positive Covid test. We were all sick within three days. A souvenir.

8. Our Dyson cordless stick vacuum, resting on its wall mount next to the balcony door. It once took to subverting its purpose, spitting a trail of dirt in its wake when we pushed it around. As we browsed replacements I remembered a vacuum store on the other side of the neighborhood, persisting in defiance of the law of Amazon. I threw the vacuum under the stroller and wheeled the baby there. Gleaming machines dotted a carpeted showroom. While I waited to be served I considered the pressure on whoever keeps those carpets clean. The man at the counter immediately identified the obvious problem. The opening enabling transit from the floor brush to the rest of the machine was entirely blocked. He swiftly righted the situation, no charge. Take that, Bezos. 

9. Light blue mug, white inside. STARBUCKS COFFEE screaming down the handle. I bought it in Marseille after moving there from Brooklyn alone at 24. When aloneness overwhelmed I went to Starbucks. I’d reflexively avoided it in New York; muzak, mass-produced atmosphere, insistence on unique nomenclature. But here in a flood of language I couldn’t yet speak, pleasures I didn’t yet know, friends I didn’t yet have, holiday pop hits and venti frappucinos were relief. I brought a piece home.

Author's Note

Where are you interested/ where do you lose interest?

Reviews

[Throwing Romeo]

Welcome to Writers Cafe

Not too shabby.
You bring a lifetime
bounty of well chosen
pleasantly descriptive
words that flow
into shape.
The imagery draws
Into focus the
painterly passage
of time in a truly
authentic frame
of mind.

Maybe a few emotive
touches would help
bring a deeper
connection.

You're a natrual
at this. Good job!

R.

[Elisabeth]

Thank you !