Stacey Joy is our host today for the 21st day of #VerseLove. You can read her full prompt here. She inspires us to write Mama’s Kitchen Poems.
Kitchens are oftentimes the heartbeat of a home. They are gathering places and hold memories like no other room in a house. Stacey mentions a recent podcast episode featuring legendary author Judy Blume, finding herself mesmerized by Blume’s memories and stories of her mother’s kitchen. If you are interested in listening to that episode, here is the link.
Next, Stacey shares the process: Let’s share our memories from our mothers’ kitchens, our own kitchens, or any kitchen that holds memories for you.
I picked the last of the figs yesterday, half at lunchtime when I was letting the dogs out and half after getting home from a day of work and a haircut. I was determined to make strawberry figs just like my mother always made at the end of each summer, when we’d put on aprons and each take a job of washing, chopping, and stirring in her kitchen.
Temperatures are finally out of the 90s, and the mornings are beginning their wee hour thermostat adjustment one little tap a week, it seems. When that happens, the figs that aren’t finished off by birds, butterflies, and squirrels – or picked before anything else gets them first – dry up like upside-down miniature deflated balloons hanging on the stems. I was able to reach enough remaining good figs for one last wave of canning for this season.
I found strawberries price-slashed on the clearance cart in our local grocery store and added a couple of two-pound boxes of cane sugar to my buggy.
My husband was off at a meeting, so it was only me and the strong presence of my mother in the kitchen washing, chopping, and stirring up strawberry fig memories together, steam rising and aromas swelling. And tears welling, as I think of all the things since December 29, 2015 that I want to tell her.
You have six great grandchildren now, Mom. Four boys and two girls. Aidan is an avid reader just like you, Sawyer loves science and nature, Saylor has ultra sass and is tougher than any of the boys, River loves to be barefooted in his backyard kayaking through the marsh and running with his three dogs, Beckham never likes wearing any clothes, and Magnolia Mae is only a month old and already a sweet little blossom rooted deep in southern culture, on her way to becoming another strong woman on your branch of the tree. Your three grandchildren are all on their feet, moving onward!
And my brother Ken is in love with his soul mate and she’s good for him, Dad needs you to tell him the answers (and how to let things go), and so do the rest of us. You’d love all three of our dogs that you never met. Your last words to dad – “You take care of these dogs” – assure me that you’d be proud to know that our Boo Radley, Fitz (short for F. Scott Fitzgerald), and Ollie (named for Mary Oliver) basically run the house so much that we call them our four-legged sons.
Thank you for teaching me the ways of your kitchen and giving me a love of strawberry figs that not everyone knows how to appreciate. As the autumn nears and passes and winter arrives, the warmth of toast laden with butter and slathered with strawberry figs will keep you herewith me.
Common Threads 