Musings on Kitchen Tables Leisha R. Mitchem
Tonight my thoughts return to our kitchen table —not the heavy wooden one with removable leaves, now resting its weight on your dining room rug— but rather to the wobbling old aluminum table with its cracked white paint and screw-on legs, sitting so practically in the corner of our old kitchen beside the back stairs leading to your workshop below. At this table you taught me to drink tea— our cool, refreshing beverage for the heat of those summers— unsweetened and over ice, black and bitter, starting from distilled water—tap would cause the sludge and the film across the surface—brought to a boil in the microwave then two tea bags floating in the heated jar, dispelling their ink like the shadow of scruff spreading over your face. There I’d rest my cheek on the cool metal, picking at paint flakes, and watch as the clear water transformed into that dark, delicious letter—“T.” I didn’t know that now, as I make tea in my own kitchen, too small for a table, I would take a single mug from the shelf, watching the bags bleed into the water, and ache for the cold of aluminum under my elbows.
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