Cold Shoulder
In a shiny new kitchen, there was no place for mess or memories.
When I redid my kitchen in January, I did not intend to design a snotty little space that outclasses me. But that's what I have, and it seems that no amount of Hamburger Helper is going to change that.
Like so many of my suburban friends who dipped into their home equity accounts to have the dream kitchen of glossy magazine lore, I had good intentions. I wanted to show the world how far I have come from the cramped, three-decker kitchens where my mother toiled, dishwasher-deprived and counter-space starved.
My new kitchen is high-style: cherry cabinets, black granite countertops, stainless-steel appliances, maple flooring. And then, just for kicks, I painted the walls red.
It's a gorgeous space. Far nicer than the battered, circa 1980s white laminate number that it replaced.
Still, there's something about the room and its Oriental rug and French art that's not quite right. Rather than saying, "Sit down and have a cup of coffee," it gives you the cold shoulder and whispers, "Spill at your peril."
Could it be all that All Clad? Or the status symbol KitchenAid mixer? Or the Sub-Zero fridge that cost more than the original mortgage on my parents' three-decker?
For all the Viking stoves in friends' suburban homes, I know only one person who actually cooks to the standard of her state-of-the-art kitchen. The rest of us are too busy working to pay off the home equity loan to spend any real time in front of those six burners. I'll be the first to admit there have been more takeout containers on my precious granite countertops than tureens of homemade soup, and most nights, my Elite-series oven stays dark while the lowly microwave zaps my Lean Cuisine. My husband, a great, messy baker, has been reluctant to work with flour for fear it will dirty up the place. And we actually had words over whether the blender was stylish enough to be kept out in the open.
So, I went on a kick to make my kitchen cozy, to turn it into the heart of the home, like the kitchens of my mother and grandmother, where goodies and gossip were always plentiful. I thought if I just traded in my designer window treatments for cotton curtains with tiebacks, it would do the trick. I convinced myself that a warm, welcoming space was just an embroidered place mat away. I put the sugar bowl on the table, stacked cookbooks on a shelf, draped a dish towel over the oven handle, and burned the biggest Home Sweet Home candle those Yankee people make.
The results were stilted, at best.
And then I visited my sister, whose galley-style, adorable-but-unglamorous kitchen is so inviting it makes me want to put on a housecoat and sautee something. The kitchen always smells pleasingly of percolated coffee and pastries or of simmering pasta sauce, and with its simple painted wood cabinets, black-and-white tiled floor, and scratched Formica countertops, it hugs you hello, like an old friend.
Her kitchen, I realized, has a history that mine lacks. And it is history that leads to heart. Somehow, heavy in the air, is every festive meal our family shared there; every meal, in fact, shared by all the families who ever lived in that house. She has no fancy cookware, no restaurant-grade appliances, and the only artwork on the walls are her packed spice rack and crocheted potholders.
It's the kitchen we grew up with. What I spurned in my own home for what I thought was better, she re-created in hers. It's no wonder that everything she cooks tastes better than anything I make. The same was true for my mother's kitchen. She and my father (the undisputed meatball king) would take great pains to pass along their recipes. But for all my kitchen's bells and whistles, nothing I cooked up could ever compare with what they churned out with their loving hands, grocery-store coupon pots and pans, and 35-year-old stove, all packed into a tiny, counterless space where the most sophisticated electrical appliance was my father's citizens' band radio.
The lesson for me was this: It's OK to fill our kitchens with the latest gadgetry and make them as gorgeous as we can afford, but if they're not fed a steady diet of good company, they will always be starved of heart.
With this in mind, I am planning a kitchen christening. I'll invite family and friends to help me smash a bottle of ketchup on a corner of the countertop to launch my kitchen into a new and, hopefully, inviting phase of its life. The walls are already red, so what will it matter? Just give me a minute to move the Oriental rug.
Doreen Iudica Vigue is a freelance writer who lives in the suburbs. She can be reached at divigue@hotmail.com.
