Teachers Write Day 1:  Monday Morning Warm-Up:

Ok, Day 1.  Like I said, I can do this.  So the directions today were to describe the kitchen of our childhood using as many sense as you can.

So I sat down willing–and hopefully able–to do this.  But the more I thought about it, I realized that some of my most vivid memories from childhood are actually not from my own house.  Not that the ones I have form home are bad ones, they’re just not really there.  So I thought of other people’s kitchens that I spent time in as a child, and my assignment came together:

Bowls.  Small bowls made of wood-looking plastic filled with salad.  And that salad is covered in French dressing.  Yep, one of my clearest memories is related to Catalina-drenched lettuce eaten in Christy B.’s kitchen.  Dark kitchen.  Why?  Because we’d eat that soggy plastic-wooden-bowl-salad as a midnight snack after everyone else was asleep.  No Oreos or ice cream for us.  Health food all the way.  Well, covered in salad dressing.  Take the bowl memory several years forward and about 100 miles up I270 and you’ll be in Sheila’s kitchen.  This time it wasn’t salad, but tomato soup.  Why does tomato soup bring such a warm, vivid memory for me? Because it’s tied to a brand new experience (don’t think I knew tomato soup existed before I ate it in Sheila’s kitchen in her big, yellow house on Mignon Dr.) and a close, loving family.  I ate so many meals in that bright, sunny kitchen over the 5 or 6 years we were friends, every one of them lovely.  I can still picture every square inch of that room today–some 20 years after.  Memories of the smiles, laughs and late-night snacks shared in that space warm my heart. So what about my own kitchen as a child? It was hard to pinpoint just which kitchen to tell about, because we moved around alot.  And even when we were at home, my parents didn’t really cook.  Everything came out of a box.  So maybe that means my childhood kitchen smelled like cardboard? 🙂

What are your childhood “kitchen” memories? Tell me about them. 🙂