Nana's Kitchen

Thirty years of widowhood had not dimmed my grandmother's Christmas spirit. It took the better part of a day to empty the Christmas Closet and set up the fireplace village with its cottonball snow, tiny white plastic fences and miniature lights. We hung huge ribbon'd wreaths on the front and back doors, lined the mantle with greenery and candles and attached mistletoe to every overhead lighting fixture we could reach. By the time we hung the stockings and finished the tree the following day, the usually gray, sterile and charmless house sparkled and everything smelled of fir trees and cinnamon. The vintage stand up radio in the foyer, 4 feet tall if an inch, was set to public radio and played nothing but Christmas music. Nana, I discovered, knew every verse of every carol ever written, and as she did not naturally possess a happy or effusive nature, it delighted me to see her so filled with Christmas spirit, all smiles and singing along. It was then I knew the transformation was complete. It was a happy time of year.

Come Christmas Eve Day, the house was warm and trimmed and ready for company but the kitchen was organized chaos. Nana's to do list was tacked to the side wall by the sink so she could refer to it often and easily. She wore a tiny gold pencil on a chain around her neck and would methodically check off each item with the finished list seeming to give her enormous satisfaction. I don't have a gold pencil but I am an inveterate list maker and I know exactly how she felt.

As Christmas Eve drew nearer, the kitchen grew more and more off limits.

“Best you have serious business or be just passin' through,” Nana warned us, “ I don't take to trespassers while I'm cookin'.”

“What can I do to help?” my daddy asked when he arrived and gave her a playful kiss on the cheek.

She returned the gesture by swatting at him with a slotted spoon and then tried to hide a smile.

“There's somethin' under the tree you can open early,” she told him gruffly, “Ain't much but it'll be useful tomorrow. Now git and don't be trackin' mud on my clean floor.”

He grinned and set off for the living room, presently returning with a shiny new electric carving knife set.

“You do know the way to a man's heart, Alice,” he announced happily and catching her unawares gave her an quick hug. She resisted and blushed slightly but I could tell she was pleased that he was pleased. In our family, emotions were kept on a tight rein and it would never have done to make a major production of a Christmas gift. We tended to thrive on practicality and an understated, almost puritanical sense of self-control. My husband's family, I reflected, practiced a shameless sort of gratitude that turned the holiday into performance art and made me acutely uncomfortable. If a gift could actually reduce someone to tears, it was considered a grand success. Needless to say, I wasn't wild about either approach. Both made me feel like a stranger and undoubtably contributed to my current dislike of all gift giving, holiday or not.

Even so, there are times when I do miss Nana's kitchen.  Not much and not often, just enough to make me smile.