I remember mostly mornings
since my grandma didn’t like to cook,
the kitchen was the place
for endless breakfasts.
A room
where aunts and uncles sat
in morning-gowns
while talking, talking
of their lives
in Paris and New York.
I listened while I watched
the shadows floating
gently through the orchard,
while
I licked the melting butter
soaking through the toast
from my grubby fingers,
and listened,
for another day to start
and take my hand to walk
me to the lake,
and wait for lunch.
Breakfast Time by Carl Holsøe
My grandmother wasn’t much of a cook as I remember, the kitchen was a place for breakfasts while all other meals were taken in the dining room, and there were often aunts and uncles there at the same time. But I do remember I ate a lot of toast when I visited my grandmother. Linked to toads
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September 21, 2019
Your poem evokes another time and place … it is delicious!
My grandmother did not like to cook in fact my grandfather did most of the cooking. She would rather tend her gardens. I remember eating “Snow’s” clam chowder thinking it was divine at lunchtime. Dreaming of far away places.
Buttery fingers and life…love that.
Nice memory, Bjorn. She couldn’t cook much but she knew you’d love toasted bread and butter. What boy wouldn’t, I sure did.
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I like the thought of you as a small boy at grandma’s, sitting with your toast while the aunts and uncles made their way through conversations about distant places. Sounds like a pleasantly dreamy place for a child.
I love the relaxed scene, aunts and uncles in morning-gowns, the butter from toast melting on your fingers. My aunts and uncles seemed impossibly glamorous back then, in the 40’s and 50’s. The glamour gene skipped my generation entirely. Smiles.
a warm childhood memory … I’m another who is not a keen cook 🙂
I love the authenticity of this narration.
Your grandma was a woman after my own heart. She obviously knew what she liked and what she didn’t. Cooking isn’t my favourite thing either.
I love the way you wrote this from the viewpoint of your little self.
Still, this is a marvelous memory for you Bjorn.
Nice to know that someone else’s grandmother was not a cook! (I had one grandmother who was wheelchair-bound by the time I was born, and another one who’d always been known as a terrible cook…I could write a poem about eating junkfood in her empty kitchen, but that feels mean.)
Ah, delightful warm memory, full of each of the senses, wonderful, evocative and sensate. I was very moved by this.
maybe she didn’t cook, but the sense of family certainly shines through (and sticky buttery fingers isn’t all bad 🙂