...to Survive without Mia Cucina

I spend a lot of time in my kitchen.  It is the one room in the house that I can call my own, well, sort of.  My kitchen is the workspace for one of my main functions in the home - to prepare and serve food for the two fussiest eaters on the planet and one teenage boy. I have always liked to cook and bake. When the Italian Mama was merely an Italian teenager, I loved to bake cakes and cookies from scratch, delighting in the notion that mixing and baking a collection of carefully measured ingredients that don't taste very good individually transforms them into something irresistible to eat. I felt as if I had performed a little miracle every time I pulled warm, aromatic chocolate cakes out of the oven. When I left my parents' home to live in my own apartment, I reveled in the freedom to cook whatever I wanted for dinner and loved hosting guests so I could make a huge pan of chicken tetrazzini or linguine with clam sauce in my tiny kitchen. Deep down inside, I took satisfaction in knowing that I was carrying on traditions that have been in my family for generations. Each special meal became an homage to my ancestors, especially my mother, who taught me everything I know about food. 

Today my kitchen is an empty shell. No cabinets, no utensils, no sink, no counter tops. Just a forlorn range and a refrigerator storing food that I can't cook and soon won't be able to eat. Yes, my husband and I made the difficult decision to remodel the kitchen which today sits hollowed out to allow for the installation of new tile floors and new cabinets. I should be excited, but I feel utterly depressed and displaced. The activity that structures my days, gives me a sense of purpose on even the most frustrating days, and helps me feel like myself has collapsed. I feel cast adrift and a bit like a piece of my self has been boxed up in put into storage. 

The Universe, however, has ways of providing me with the perspective I need to carry on without crumbling. Just as this remodeling job began, and I felt at my lowest, nearly in tears, in fact, anticipating a long stretch without my kitchen, I heard a news report from a refugee camp in Turkey where many Syrians have fled the violence in their hometowns. The reporter interviewed a woman who had left hastily in the night with a few bundles of clothes and food for herself and her nine children. Nine! According to the report the camps are becoming overcrowded and supplies are scarce. How will this woman feed her nine children? Where will they sleep? What will they do during the day? Suddenly, with a roof over our heads, comfy beds to sleep in at night, and a vast array of restaurant choices, my distress in my upturned home seems so trivial; my home, idyllic. I gain strength in imaging that this mother of nine must go deep within herself to find both the emotional and physical resources it will take to bring herself and her children through this ordeal. Surely, if this brave woman and her children can survive their existence as refugees, I am old enough to find similar resources deep within the Italian Mama to find my way through my kitchen's facelift.

Providing food and drink for my family without my kitchen will be the easy part. Feeling like a fully intact Italian Mama even without my kitchen will be a little harder but a life lesson worth learning because you never know when you might be truly cast adrift in the world without your loved ones, without your home, without your job, or even without your kitchen.