Women In The Kitchen

There was a time when women spent most of their time in the kitchen. Cooking took longer without all the fancy gadgets we have today. When I was growing up in the 1950’s, my mother mashed garlic, sliced potatoes and diced onions with the same knife. In fact, I don’t recall any other utensil being used to prepare dinner. She did not own a set of measuring spoons or cups. I watched her use her eyes and her hands to measure a little of this and some of that. She cooked with a secret sense and was always able to stretch the pot to accommodate an unexpected guest or two.

“I’ll just add some more water and throw in a little more pasta,” was her mantra.

I spent a lot of time in my mother’s kitchen learning to cook by watching her prepare food for company, helping her slice vegetables, stirring the pots, smelling the steam and adding more seasoning when needed. But the times I enjoyed the most were after the meal when all the women would retreat to the kitchen to wash the dishes, leaving the men to talk about worldly matters and smoke their cigars on the porch.

I would help out drying the dishes just so I could listen as my aunts told their intimate stories of love and marriage. Half the time I couldn’t understand them when they started talking Italian, but I knew whatever they were saying was risqué because their bawdy laughter would rock the dishes in the drain board and my mother would steal a quick blushing glance my way as she covered her mouth in laughter. Sometimes I would catch one of my aunt’s dabbing her eyes with a dishtowel while the others gathered around her in a show of strength.

As an adult, I know now what those women were talking and laughing about. They are the age old tales that any woman can share from any era: they are the stories of love and marriage and women and men and the incompatibility between the sexes. Sometimes there are tears shed over the sink with the admission of infertility or the confession of an unwanted pregnancy. Sometimes we brag about our children, and sometimes we console someone whose child went astray. It would take a man several years of visits to a professional therapist to open up like women do with each other while drying the plates and scrubbing the pots.

Sometimes a curious man will wander into the kitchen to see what all the chatter and laughter is about, but he is quickly booted out by a swarm of women wielding wet dish towels, protecting their domain - and their secrets - from intruders.