I recently spent the week with my happily retired parents. They live out of state, in a place not easily reached by airplane. I drove five hours to get there; a quiet, warm desert oasis where one may live without the burdens of the eight-hour workday; where many have chosen to live out their golden years.
On my second day, an interesting lesson presented itself in my mother’s kitchen. She decided to cook migas and insisted that I watch her. This breakfast dish isn’t a difficult one to make, but it is one that requires some attention because it involves multiple ingredients cooked in a particular order.
I won’t go into the detail of how migas is made; for that, you may find on most tortilla packages. I will say that my mother was insistent that I watch her even when I didn’t want to. I was in the living room, accepting a little time that the desert had awarded me to write.
I sighed, but I relented to her request. There was something peculiar about her behavior. She wasn’t usually insistent that any of her children watch her cook; so I stood up and went into the kitchen.
The lesson I learned wasn’t how to prepare migas. The lesson I learned was that kitchens are not always about cooking. Kitchens are instruments for connecting the past with the present, for creating memory, for solidifying heritage, and for extending the family.
This last point struck me as most important because of its truth: kitchens are instruments for extending the family.
The kitchen binds oral, written, and physical tradition. It encapsulates all three in such a way as to become a living instrument, something related to the family; in so doing, it has the potential of extending itself well after a family has gone. It contains a life, a personality, a character unique to itself and specific to the family that brought it life.
In that brief time with my mother, I could see why she was insistent. I could see that she wanted me to be closer so that she could talk. She wanted me to smell the bacon and to write down the instructions. She extended my knowledge and my abilities. She also did something else. She taught me a new importance of kitchens but in doing so, introduced me to someone special.
Copyright © Tyler Gant 2009
