The kitchen is the heart of the home. We spend much time there—preparing meals, packing lunches, feeding pets, baking goodies, doing dishes, overseeing homework, and much more. I am blessed to have in my kitchen half a dozen items from the kitchens of women I love. In a prior post (https://liftedup.us/the-color-box/) I told you the story of my mom’s cookie dough bowl and that it resides on a cabinet top above the sink.
The hammered silver ice bucket that lives on my countertop was tucked away in a cabinet belonging to my much-loved mother-in-law Rosalie. About ten years ago several of us were helping Rosalie clean out her kitchen in order to move the most often used items to her level. Rosalie was in charge of making the decision to throw away, donate, or keep the non-essenstials. When the ice bucket was shown to her, she said, “Oh I’ll never use that again. I guess I’ll donate it. But it was a 50th anniversary gift.” I said, “Then that’s being donated to me, Nanny.” She took great pleasure in coming to our home and seeing that beautiful ice bucket on display.
Glancing at the white milk glass vase from my sister Beverly reminds me of how she painstakingly built up a collection, enough so to share a vase with me. And the hand-crafted small wooden container is from my sister Barbara who insisted I bring it home from her kitchen to my own simply because I admired it.
When my elderly Aunt Gerri moved from her house to an apartment, much of what had been in her large kitchen needed to be packed up for storage. On a visit a few years back, I asked if I could have some small item that had been in her kitchen. Shortly before Aunt Gerri died last year, her daughter-in-law Beth remembered my request and presented me with a six-unit decorative muffin tin that originally had been my grandmother’s. That tin, propped up next to the ice bucket, reminds me of my cousin, my aunt, and my grandmother.
There is something comforting about having these items in my presence. Each of these women is close in my thoughts as I go about my work in the kitchen.
To keep alive this sharing of “heart of the home” items, I have passed along some of my inherited heirloom items to my daughter, step-daughter, and several nieces. What point was there in keeping all those plates, wine glasses, dessert bowls, utensils, etc., stored and unused? I like to believe that this next generation of women thinks of me and the original owner of grandmother or great-grandmother as they go about working in their own kitchens. And I hope they’ll keep the giving practice alive.
To my readers: Share with us the story of something in your kitchen that makes you smile and remember someone.
I think most kitchen items are “handed down” by the woman of the house. However, mine were given to me by my Dad. The first item he gave me was a vegetable slicer. The one I was using never sliced the potatoes as uniform as I liked. I mentioned this to my Dad, and the next day he came to the house and gave me a Morris Metric vegetable slicer – I could tell it wasn’t brand new, but it still slices potatoes as perfectly today as it did when he gave it to me over 50 years ago. It has never “lost its edge,” so to speak. The second kitchen item he gave me was his “old hand-held” potato masher. It has a wooden handle, and it has been repaired (soldered) many times through the years. I remember my Dad mashing potatoes with it when I was a young girl – and there were never any lumps in his mashed potatoes. He would be amazed today if he knew that I used it, not only for mashing potatoes, but also for crushing grapes and different berries for making jelly. I hope the next generation will cherish these items as much as I do.
It’s amazing that these tools have held up so well! Thanks for sharing.