Day 30 Kitchen tea

 Our kitchen has just had a full renovation. Three weeks ago I manically packed up my entire kitchen on a Sunday afternoon. Things just got chucked into boxes because I didnt have time to be all feng shui and zen. 

Now that it's almost done and I'm one lick of paint away from a brand new kitchen I've decided I'm over washing plates in my bath and preparing salads on my late father in laws writing desk so I'm moving back in. 

But I didnt think it would be this emotional. Almost everything we own is either a hand me down or a kitchen tea or wedding present. And I still remember who gave us what. 

And some of those people aren't alive anymore, or our friendship has drifted apart, or they live on the other side of the world and sometimes they are still second on my WhatsApp messages. 

And 14 years into our marriage lots of the things are a little the worse for wear. They might have the odd chip, or now be an incomplete collection, Uncle Rick's hand made wooden egg cup has split in half and Great Granny Julia's 1960s tin opener has crossed the rainbow bridge. 

And I'm finding it hard to let things go. Because they have been a part of 14 years of marriage. Of meals. Of nurture. Of children. Of a love story I wasn't sure I would get.

When food is your love language the things that make the food become metaphors for that love. They are not just utensils, they are the receptacles of very tangible, tasty memories. And the people who gave you these things become a part of the fabric of your every day life. Four random soup bowls bought hastily the day before a wedding and shoved in a gift bag become the imprint of every bowl of soup that a couple will ever eat because they will always think of you when they eat soup. And the spicy gift bag you made up for the kitchen tea of knickers, a phallic lemon squeezer and ticklish pastry baster will be an inside joke for ever. 

Culling the broken things doesnt kill the memories that come with them. And I celebrate each one because these gifts were given to us as a celebration of, and an investment in, a marriage that had not even been made. And all these years later the love remains, the children now eat from the soup bowls and the food continues to celebrate the love, and the utensils, that formed our home 14 years ago. 



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