These days as I get up there is mostly darkness. The glow of fall mornings doesn’t arrive until I am well on my way to work.
As I get up I wrap myself in my sweatshirt, normally reserved for cooler summer days by the ocean. I curl tight against the pillows of the couch, guarding against a melancholy that threatens to overwhelm. The sun and apple picking of yesterday feel far away; the day ahead feels long and rainy.
These are the days when melancholy seems to make its home in my soul, where I feel my heart start to harden around the edges anticipating a cold winter.
It often scares me – my need for sun and warmth. As though the cold has too much power over me.
I head out the door to wait for the 64 bus and as I wait my eye is drawn across the street to a Victorian home. The house has been split into condominiums as is common in this area. Through a clear glass door a bright light shines, cutting through the dim morning light. Fully visible on the other side of the glass is a little person – a toddler in onesie pajamas with tousled bed head.
The warm kitchen and toddler take me back to my days as a younger mom, to warm kitchens and oatmeal cookies, to tables dusted with flour and homemade bread. I’m taken back to five little ones who each had their place in a warm kitchen.
Amazing how the scene pushed the melancholy right out of my heart. For it’s in warm kitchens that little hearts and souls develop. It’s in warm kitchens where confidence is born and love takes root. It’s in warm kitchens where courage is planted and watered and fed, so that we can go out into a world that is anything but warm. It’s in warm kitchens where faith is birthed, grows, and learns to launch.
It’s in warm kitchens where little and big hearts lose their bitter edges and warm to relationship.
The 64 bus is around the corner and the moment is gone but not without its lasting imprint. I sigh and board the bus with a curious resolve to hold this warm kitchen moment until the brilliant colors and breezes of spring blow away the sadness and bring in the front porch moments.
Have you had any warm kitchen moments lately? Would love to hear in the comment section?
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Marilyn R. Gardner 
Yes, I miss those days where you could find all of us baking in the kitchen, but I still love when I get to help cook soup with you and taste to see what else it needs! I love you mama!
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And I love you my Stef! So. Much. Will bake bread when I get home.
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Many Yankees cling to the gray, rainy morning. Explains a lot about Yankees I guess.
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Hahahaha! I love how this comment sits in the middle of sentimentality with it’s Yankee nudge back to reality. You are the best and I am so happy that you read CAB.
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I’m so glad that our kitchen is large enough to accommodate a round table for eating because food tastes so much better in the kitchen, doesn’t it? When you visit us, breakfast will be served in the kitchen. Our table is for 4 but it is not unusual for 6 or 7 to gather round!
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Yes and our whole family remembers how you made pancakes for Joel on his birthday when we stayed with you – I think it was 2002? You exercised your gifts of hospitality and this family will never forget. Thank you.
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Love this! It brings back soooo many memories of being small again – those days when my brother and I would wake each other up in the morning, creep into the living room, and find our oversized trucks. I can still remember the warm feeling of *family*… the smell of toast and oatmeal in the kitchen … the warmth of knowing everything was good. Life was good. Life was as simple as the joy of hot oatmeal on a snowy morning, and trucks with my brother. Now we’re both grown, working jobs in totally different fields – but those occasional Saturday mornings together with hot oatmeal and toast still warm us both! :)
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I love this so much – the picture of you and your brother and the kitchen and the trucks….all that is lovely. I think of that verse “But whatever is pure etc. Think on these things” I also love the picture you give of both of you as grown-ups still having those occasional moments. Thank you Jessica.
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This post lifted MY heart! I’ve been keenly feeling the shift toward darker, colder mornings along with my annual dread of winter rising within. I truly cannot remember such melancholy about gray, dreary mornings when our children were young, maybe because those warm kitchen moments filled up the days and there was so much less time then to think! But now even though heading off to a job I mostly love and with so little that must be done before I leave, jumpstarting a gray day takes so much more emotional effort! But I will resolve the same: to hold a vision of those warm kitchen moments and sing a song of gratitude for each and every one of them. And next time I make cornbread with our little granddaughter or play on the kitchen floor with our toddler grandsons, I’ll offer a prayer of gratitude for new warm kitchen moments. Giving thanks can surely bring light and warmth to the darkest and coldest of days! Thanks, Dear Marilyn!!
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Love this picture you give of your grandchildren! What a gift eh? I’m trying to remember this post today with as much resolve as I did yesterday and reading your comment helped!
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Oh Marilyn…what a great piece! Thank you for this –on this grey Kansas Autumn day!
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Kansas is having weather like us :( So hard eh? Love you!
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