My home place glows with the lively spirit of a loving, nurturing family. My one- story ranch type home in Tanglewood, Houston, Texas, stands next to and across from the other two ranch type homes on this block of eight large homes. My late husband, Carl, and our family of Elaine, Carol and Dale, moved here 45 years ago. A lot of living, loving and nurturing has gone on in my home. It is filled with memories. Carl died last year, 1995. But the family still holds together. Most of the children and grandchildren live in Houston.
I am here alone, but I am not lonely. I sit at the kitchen window looking out at my pecan tree (it’s now midwinter) standing silently at ease, holding its bare, brown, strong arms up high as if to protect my home from ill winds. I watch the blackbirds come and go from the branches. They sit motionless until one bird moves, then they all fly away.
I think of all those millions of pecan leaves that blew down and went into my compost piles behind the garage. I love to look at the compost and think about the microorganisms busily “chewing” up the leaves and turning them into black friable dirt for my flowers, tomatoes and lots more leaves.
I think of my close-knit family and how we all sat at the narrow breakfast table breaking bread together, hundreds of times over the years. The kitchen played the part of a heart sending its blood around to all the other rooms bringing the children and my husband and me to the kitchen for nurturing, solving problems and listening to Carl tell stories of Zuzu, who was a little boy not unlike Carl when he was a boy. The kitchen’s white walls and floor contrast with the brown cabinets and the colorful flowers on the table.
The only sound that goes on now is the periodic noise of the refrigerator making ice. The kitchen wasn’t always quiet. I remember long ago the laughter, screaming, dancing and record music at a teenage broom dance in our kitchen. Or the jabber of a bunch of children just home with the car pool, eating brownies and drinking cokes. Or my garden club talking while they made flower arrangements, dropping leaves, stems and flowers all over the white floor.
My kitchen is the home of many interesting crafts. I can always find something to do. I love to take the flower press undone and remove the pressed pansies with their quaint little faces. They always cheer me up. I glue them on cards to put on sacks of potpourri. Rose petals are drying in cookie sheets on top of the refrigerator. Lavender and rose geranium scents seep out of the potpourri jars.
But most of all my kitchen is a place where good food appears pretty constantly. I’ve had plenty of experience, being married 62 years to my husband. Anyway, I love to cook. It’s my job to make birthday cakes for everyone; our family is 15 now. My kitchen is like the Raggedy Ann stories where food grows on trees!One of the enjoyable things I do is make bread. I started long ago, making nourishing, healthy bread with wheat germ, cracked wheat, soy and whole wheat flour. The children at school made fun of my children’s health food. I was trying so hard to nourish them properly and they liked my bread despite the teasing.
I taught the grandchildren to make bread and when we made bread, odd sounds filled the kitchen: kneading the dough, pummeling, patting, slapping it on the board. Then good smells of yeast dough rising and cooking filled the white kitchen. Best of all came the delicious taste of hot buttered bread.
Carl and I took many trips, leaving the children with their grandmothers, but it was always good to get home. When the children had to leave the nest, like all birds do, Carl and I tried to help them. Elaine, our first-born, was a home-body. When her Rice friends moved into apartments, Elaine remained at home. Her father jokingly kept reminding her to move out of the nest. “We are going to get a dray and move you out and play music,” he threatened in a loving way. Finally Elaine decided to join her school teacher friends. Instead of a dray, she had a borrowed truck. As she drove down the driveway in her old hand-me-down family car, all the family stood on the porch waiving goodbye, while Dale stood on the steps playing his violin. We turned it into a big, jolly breakaway.
Later, when Carol sailed away to Spain to work for Esso Espanoles, Carl and I wrote loving goodbyes and encouragement to help her brave the strange far away places. She wrote back about the interesting experiences she was having.
Last our youngest, Dale, left his home place to go to India to the Peace Corps. Dale sent us tapes that he made outdoors so we heard birds singing and his voice, which eased his homesick feeling of unfamiliar surroundings.
Many years have passed. I am here alone, but our three children, their spouses and a great grandchild crowd into the kitchen to visit. When Carl died last year, our friends came into the kitchen to express their condolences and felt at home.
I don’t know how much longer I and my home place will be here. When I leave and my home place is torn down like all the rest of the one-story homes, the glowing spirit that filled its doors will remain with the loving, nurturing family members.