Memory Jogging

Isn't it great how we can close our eyes and return to a place we haven't been in years?

In high-school I took a writing course held by an incredible teacher. Of course, being a rebellious high-school student, I probably didn't take away nearly as much as I could have, but one thing I remember clearly were his memory spiders. We'd write a place in the center, and then, using all of our senses, break that place down into all of it's elements. We'd explore every facet of that place, go through it with every sense and re-create it. Once we'd fully fleshed out the details we could write about it.

This sort of brainstorming stuff is not something I'm particularly good at. For the most part, when I write, it comes from the moment, not from some forced exercise in remembering. But sometimes, in my mind, I will create these little memory spiders, I'll envision every little detail about somewhere I've been. Branch them out into the five senses, really re-live moments there.

Today I am thinking of my Mema's kitchen. Don't know why, but that image is looming inside of me. Maybe just because grandmother's kitchens are places of warmth and safety and familiarity. Maybe it's some sort of little twinge of homesickness.

Forgive me if this goes nowhere, but I feel compelled to flesh it out a little.



The wrought iron door casts vining shadows across the pergo floor. It's gritty beneath my bare feet. Not exactly dirty, just a fine layer of red-clay silt trudged carelessly in from the winding driveway. The wood paneling glows honey-oak in the lilting afternoon sun.

Everything is earth-tone, orange, brown, wood. Over on the cooktop, four large pots bubble away, emitting their organic scent. Limas, corn, black-eyed bliss mingled with the sweetness of ham hocks simmering away to soupy perfection.

Over the sink there is a glass-rack, cradling the stems of very unfancy glass goblets. We'd drink sweet tea from them, as if it were the nectar of honeysuckle freshly plucked from the enormous vines overflowing the barbed-wire fence just outside.

The countertops are orange Formica, straight from the sixties. The height of fashion back when Daddy Dean designed this places. Speaking of heights, all of the cabinets are beneath the counters instead of above. Mema is a petite little thing at just barely five feet. A striking contrast to her nearly seven foot husband.

This kitchen reminds me of lazy summer sundays, after church afternoons spent on a barstool, bellied up to the island. It wasn't just a place to cook and eat. It was the hub. The place where family came together. The uncles crowded around, smelling of the field and the heat in their off-brand jeans and sleveless Marlboro shirts. Their hair sweat-plastered to their heads, a tribute to a hard day's work. They sit in creaky wooden chairs, legs out before them, crossed at the ankles, flicking their cigarettes into an amber ashtray in the center of the old table.

I always wanted to be like them. Hard on the outside, weathered in that Clint Eastwood sort of way.

And that's as far as this can go now. Jonas is awake. I'm fully aware that there is no cohesion there, just a jumble of images that don't really seem to fit. But that's where writing starts, isn't it? I'll get it all together eventually, make it say what I want it to. Give it a purpose. Or maybe I won't. Either way, time to hit post.