Stovetop Stories

I am not an expert cook, though I’ve learned a lot in kitchens. Like, how to make visitors feel welcome when all you have to share is spare.

Standing over my stovetop in late spring 2009, I wondered how a depression era woman might approach my problem. I’d been fired a third time for about the same reasons. It wasn’t me, and it was. At least as far as they were concerned.

The soup in front of me bore resemblance to my condition. Cobbled together from a career worth of leftovers. Nutritious but bland. Enough and not much. Over qualified, uninspired.

Shoulder width away in time, a certain cameraderie arose in my heart. Wise women whispered — the power of stew in a pot. How many families had one soup nourished? Whose hearts were healed by a dish handed over a threshold. How many gooses got cooked in those precedent (and prescient) kitchens.

Not the usual cozy metaphors. Baked tarts? More like changed hearts. Those nearby values fostered in the confines of an abode.

Humble courage developed in the days ahead. Intuitive stumbles. Rambles and gambles. Gambits when two or three bits fit. Slowly knitting parts into a whole, having moved the metaphor to my sitting room on the first floor.

Circles of unmatched chairs suited the odd fellows there. We all knew it was rare. Art is-is when other people are present. We-we circles out from that sacred center.

The Washington Writers Retreat was born in that kitchen collective. A convection to make creative liberty cost effective.