The Kitchen

The Assignment - The Kitchen

Part 1: A young woman walks into her family's kitchen. Her boyfriend is about to come over to meet her parents for the first time (or some other joyful occasion of your choosing.) Describe the way she might see the kitchen: the table, the linoleum, the curtains, whether the place looks clean or dirty, flawed or perfect. Essentially, try and show how she is feeling about the event through the descriptions of the objects. If she is nervous, or happy, or excited. Feel free to use adjectives, of course. ☺

Part 2: Exact same kitchen. Same young woman. She is now coming home from the funeral of her mother. Describe the kitchen, repeating many of the objects: linoleum, curtains, etc. But now how does her current emotional state change the way these same objects look? How can you use the environment and her interaction with it, or observation of it, to allow the reader an indirect illumination of her emotional interior.

One thing to consider during this exercise, allow her to have ambivalence. She isn't just sad about her mother, she isn't just eager about the boyfriend. She may have many conflicting emotions about these events, perhaps even seemingly contradictory ones, as in life.

Part 1

"Ok, just breath..." she says to herself as she paces over the well worn black and white, checker board linoleum of the kitchen of her childhood home. Deciding that she didn't want to be responsible for a race-track shaped oval in the center of the floor as a result of her neurotic behavior she decides she would call her best friend to help calm her nerves, but on her way to her purse inadvertently trips over one of her mother's gardening clogs tucked not so neatly under the chrome rimmed, red kitchen table.

"Crap!!!" she lets out a wail as the table, catching her full weight, lunges forward with a high pitched screech.

"Ughhhhh.." she sighs in exasperation as she slumps into one of the coordinating red vinyl chairs shoving aside the bowl of red delicious apples. Most people loved her parents quirky 1950's diner inspired kitchen, but just this once she would LOVE for them to be normal. You know, the pine-farm-table-whitewashed-cabinets-apple-pie-cooling-in-the-window, kind of normal that she had seen so many times on those home design magazines.

"I wonder what type of kitchen John grew up in?" she pondered. John was her boyfriend of 10 months who, in what she was beginning to believe was a lapse in judgment, was coming over to meet her parents for the first time.

"I wonder if Dad still hides the good booze in the old fashioned bread canister?" she thought, as her mind raced in an effort to placate the inevitable anxiety she was convinced this meeting would entail.

"Don't be ridiculous, alcohol is not the solution." she argued back to herself in a manner that would have made Betty Ford proud, as she placed a carefully manicured finger nails firmly between her carefully painted lips. Nail biting was a habit she had outgrown after the age of 17, a habit only reserved for the most stressful of times in her life. Like now. Nail biting used to bug the hell out of her mother when she was a teenager.

It's probably why she did it for so long. She used to sit in this same chair, at this same table, doing her homework after school as her mother, clad in a white lace apron that not so coincidentally matched the curtains above the sink, would lovingly prepare the evening's meal. Despite being 1985, songs by Frankie Valley, The Four Tops and Elvis would blare out of single speaker of the 1950's era single band radio as her mother bopped along cheerily to the beat of a bygone era. In all of her teenage, aqua-neted, Frankie Says Relax, angst, she used to hate that. On occasion her mother would walk away from the roast du jour from her latest Betty Crocker cookbook and try to get her to dance just as she was trying to dive into the most complicated algebraic nightmare of a math assignment known to man. God she REALLY hated that. So much so, that it would send her into a nail biting frenzy to the dismay of Peggy Sue.

"You know the first thing many people notice about a woman is her hands..." her mother used to tell her without looking up from the meatloaf squishing between her long, slender fingers.

"You know the first thing many people notice about a woman is..." she would begin to mock in a high pitched tone "HER BRAINS!!! I'm trying to study, can't you see that!" she used to rage back slamming the book shut.

"Or her bad attitude..." her mother would crisply but calmly respond under her breath as she would glide over to the refrigerator, to retrieve whatever ingredient she needed. She used to swear that that beast must be cooled by ice blocks it was "so old".

"You just don't get me!" she would begin her rant "You just don't get what is important to me. Just because you choose to stay home and have no life, don't make it difficult for me to do better things with mine!"

Her mother always absorbed this terse commentary without uttering a word. This type of interaction inevitably ended all manner of discussion between the two of them. For the remainder of the afternoon they would sit in silence, with the notable exception of Paul Anka or Bobby Darren, until dinner was ready when their opposing worlds retreated back to their respective corners.

Suddenly her cell phone rang in her purse, snapping her back to the present. She calmly pushed herself away from the table, walked over to the counter missing the clogs this time and grabbed her phone. It was John. He was calling to see if there was anything he could pick up on his way. There was nervous excitement in his voice. He was really looking forward to meeting her parents, seeing where she grew up, what it was about this place that made her the wonderful woman that she is. The caring tone of his voice always made her smile. As he carried on about his day, wondering out loud about her family and what they would want to know, her mind began to wander. If this kitchen, in all of its embarrassing red vinyl, checker board, 1950'sdoo wop glory, was part of what made her a "wonderful woman" in his eyes, it must somehow, be...wonderful.

"Wonderful...." she thought to herself for a moment, letting the word roll around in her head as if hearing it for the first time. Wonderful - a word she once would have never associated with her life growing up in that little red kitchen.

"Baby, you alright?" John asked sensing she had long disappeared from their conversation.

"Yeah, I am" she answered "I really, really am."

Part 2

Apple Pie. She finally got her apple pie. More apple pies than she knew what to do with in fact. They must have heard it was her favorite. Or someone was reading over her shoulder as she glanced through those home design magazines. Instinctively, she carefully took one of those apple pies from her mother's prized chrome rimmed table and placed it in the window above the sink. She stood there for a moment and just stared.

"I can't remember the last time she even made an apple pie" it occurred to her as she stared at its golden flaky crust. She closed her eyes and felt a small smile grow across her face as she allowed the aroma of crisp ripe apples, cinnamon and sugar to float into her nostrils, absorb into her olfactory receptors and activate the part of her brain that brought her back to a better place and time.

Apple Hill was one of the Sunday trips they used to take when she was a child. No matter what was going on in their lives - school assignments, deadlines at work, or even the coveted home town football game that was NEVER televised except once a year - her mother would pile both kids, the family dog and her cranky husband (who cursed under his breath at the thought of missing THE game) into the family car and made their way 90 minutes into an alternate reality involving pine trees, fresh mountain air and orchard after orchard bursting with apples at their peak of ripeness. Golden Delicious, Granny Smith, Gala, McIntosh, and the king of all apples - Red Delicious. Her brother and she loved this day. They would run mach speed out of the family wagon into the orchards after the family dog, laughing and frolicking, feeling freer than any other time in their young lives. Their father would stroll up casually soon after with a couple of baskets instructing them "have at it" as he snuck off back to the car to catch a few seconds of the game before her mother inevitably discovered his diabolical plan, gave him "that look" as he slammed the car door and followed her off to find prized antiques or the latest in country crafts. At the end of the day everyone would just seem a little happier - her brother on the verge of losing it after ingesting a world record number of apple fritters (8 being his personal best), her father rosy cheeked and glassy eyed after one too many "samples" of apple wine, and she after finding the world's best hot cider than warmed her from the inside out and made her think of her favorite holidays such as Thanksgiving and Christmas. Her mother never seemed to have purchased a thing, eaten more than her share or tried to scold any of us for each of our hedonistic displays that inevitably resulted. She would just smile, pile us all back in the car, take the keys from her father and guide them safely home the 90 minutes from whence they came, back to their reality.

As she and her brother grew older, she a sophomore in high school and her brother far away at college, these annual trips seemed to suddenly stop. So did the connection with her mother. Some called it inevitable growing pains and teenage angst. She often wondered if there was some magic spell that Apple Hill placed on them that kept the mother and daughter bond intact. Whatever it was, they seemed to never get it back. Now days they would argue over life choices (her mother felt she worked too hard and never made time for family, friends and hobbies), children (she felt her career was in an upward trajectory and children would only derail it) and eventually, her mother's treatment. Her mother opted out of the third round of chemotherapy. The first two rounds had cost her her hair, her energy, her vitality, her livelihood - this was all after the cancer had taken her breasts. Her mother died peacefully in the arms of her beloved husband 3 months later. She was working when she received the call from her brother who had traveled with his wife and three daughters to be by her side.

She turned away from the apple pie in the window and stared across the room as tears filled her eyes. Everything was exactly the same as it had always been - the "beast" stood humming near the back door, the red chrome rimmed tables contained its trademark bowl of red delicious apples, the black and white checkered floor intact minus a few markings of time. But yet, everything was different. The single speaker dial radio was silent, with refrains of Frankie Valley and Elvis only a faded memory. The double oven that finished countless meat-loafs and Thanksgiving turkeys was eerily cold. It was as if the life she had formerly known, had never existed. Tears streamed down her face, as she allowed her head to fall into her hands for comfort.

Once composed, she instinctively looked down at her hands. They looked just like her mother's. She had never really stopped to notice that before. She had spent most of her life trying to escape her mother's ideals, her advice, her guidance and at times her shadow. But there, in that little red kitchen she realized that it was impossible.

She knew what she had to do. She drug one of the red vinyl chairs from the table, missing her mother's ever present gardening clogs, in front of "the beast" in order to reach the high cupboards above it. Shaking slightly, she removed her shoes, climbed up on the chair, reached inside this seldom opened cupboard and grabbed down a well worn copy of her mother's favorite Betty Crocker cookbook. She carefully climbed down and she flipped through its time faded pages and placed it carefully on the counter. Walking slowly to the chrome and red table, she picked up that bowl of ever present red delicious apples and began peeling.

"I'm going to make and apple pie..." she thought to herself.

And somewhere, her mother smiled.