Eyeing The Kitchen

A new perspective on larger concerns.

You get a very different perspective on life in the kitchen when you crawl across the floor. For instance, the huge brigade of ants that suddenly appeared by the outside door which you thought were annihilated last week have regrouped and are now trooping along the baseboard to climb up the side of the bookcase. And there’s the blueberry that fell off the counter at breakfast time, then totally disappeared despite a very intense search. It was under the dishwasher this whole time. The unusual amount of floor scrubbing I decided to do in a fit of late spring cleaning missed almost every corner. Most distressing after fracturing my foot this weekend was finding that it’s all but impossible to reach the top of the counter to pull myself to stand. I’m too proud to ask for help so I end up like an acrobat performing a vaudeville routine by first grabbing hold of a lower bookshelf then using the refrigerator’s door handle to haul myself halfway up where I barely reach the door of a lower cabinet. TADA!–a supremely crooked stance is achieved.

Look how high that counter is!

My kitchen is in no way prepared to pass ADA standards. This is something to mull over because I intend to stay put until heavenly angels come to drag me out.

Even before this latest situation, I’ve been thinking lately about the ways my mom navigated her physical decline. She and my equally frail dad were finally convinced to move to an assisted living apartment after multiple health issues had landed her in a hospital. My sister and brother and I thought they were settling in nicely in their apartment right up until we found out she had contacted a contractor to make her house’s basement more comfortable to live in full time. The poor contractor found himself caught between a very stubborn customer and her concerned and annoyed children as he remodeled a tiny makeshift kitchen in the laundry room. When he finished, it was clear it could barely handle a coffee maker. Even if our mom was still interested in preparing the fine dinners she was known for, there was little room for her and my dad to comfortably eat at the small table pressed up against the wall.

That kitchen allowed my parents to live in their house even as her proper kitchen upstairs languished under dust. I never saw my mom cook much in the basement but it gave her enough room to reign over her own domain.

A few years later after my dad died, my mom fell and her injuries were severe enough that she reluctantly agreed to move into a nursing home. It was in no imaginable way ideal, but she received great care and ultimately found a bit of the peace she had lost.

On one of my brother’s and me last visits, our mom sat in her chair and gestured to the cabinet by her bed.

“It’s time to peel the potatoes,” she said.

It was precisely the hour she used to begin preparing dinner at home. My brother and I glanced at one another, startled and unsure about how to respond.

He settled on a smile. “How many you want?”

“Four. Make sure they’re good. No eyes,” she said, lips pursed, as impatient as ever with a stupid question.

I reached down to the cabinet door then righted myself: four unblemished phantom potatoes in my hands.

She approved the choices and commenced to make dinner in her safest kitchen yet.

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