Today, in my wanderings, the wall stencil pictured here caught my eye. Nothing fancy, but it brought back memories of my mom's kitchen, one of her kitchens. We moved quite a bit and she was always undertaking a new decorating project. She has always been a creative diy-er.
The kitchen I remembered today was the one in our little house in Jackson, KY. She papered the eat-in kitchen in tiny little strawberries and strawberry blossoms. We had a picnic table with long benches and she made a table cloth and bench pads stenciled with strawberries similar to these. We lived there just over two years, but my mom's kitchen capers were glorious there.
She always cooked family meals from scratch. There wasn't much to do in Jackson, so she walked to the little grocery a couple of blocks away every day or two and bought ingredients for some new recipe. She even bought the ingredients and stood back to watch me try my hand at Coq au Vin for my French class. What a disaster, but she was there to cheer me on.
She hosted many of our friends and my dad's coworkers. She once produced a buffet for 150 people from the college where my dad worked. It rivaled any I ever seen in the pages of Southern Living.
She developed hypoglycemia and took her healthcare into her own hands in this kitchen. I remember a number of trips to Lexington to stock up on raw almonds, and buckwheat groats, and steel cut oats. Those stock up trips out of town were always an event and highly anticipated by my sisters and me.
So, today, when I needed just a little comfort, I happened to notice these strawberries and think of Mom. No matter how long we were ever in a place, Mom worked to make it seem like home. No matter what was happening in our lives, she worked to make home feel like our safe haven. Somehow, today, it helped to remember that. I can work to make wherever we are today home. Thanks, Mom.
Namaste
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