In Grandma's Kitchen

Ask almost anyone to finish a sentence that starts, “In my Grandma’s kitchen,” and you’ll get a litany of memories that come forth in a rush. Making gingerbread men out of chocolate-chip dough, or basting the Thanksgiving turkey with Grandma’s secret brandy recipe. Mastering the art of whipping mashed potatoes and still keeping them lumpy. Feeling the coolness of linoleum under bare feet on the morning after a sleepover, or tugging on the pantry door that was just a little bit sticky to open.

Of my grandmother’s kitchen I remember the countertops. They were tile—pale, sunny yellow squares with aqua rectangles that rolled over the front edges. I liked that tile, its tidy geometry joined by creamy lines that darkened over time.

Next favorite was a knife—the one Grandma used to make ham and egg salad. Lots of mayonnaise. Some mustard. Celery and onion. Salt and pepper. And ham carved right off the five-pound roast that we’d had the night before—the flat, egg-shaped kind that somehow fit perfectly into a flat, egg-shaped tin that we had to open with a key that unwound a strip of metal all the way around the tin. It was like unwrapping an oversized cigarette or gum package, only I had to be careful not to cut my fingers on the metal and not to spill the ham juice all over the table.

Grandma would cube the cold, leftover ham on the counter and slice the hard-boiled eggs in her palm. The knife sliced easily through the ham slabs—click click click on the tiles. Soundlessly through the eggs. Scrape the side of the blade on the edge of the Pyrex bowl—the green one from the nested set. A lovely sliding chime of metal on glass to move all the smooshed egg yolk into the bowl.

After she was done, we’d wash the knife and dry it—“Blade side out from the sponge and towel,” said Grandma, “so you don’t cut your hand”—and then hang it on its metal rack of two magnetic strips. Mosu had screwed the rack to the side of the cabinet that held their Franciscan ware—dinner plates and bowls and cups in the Apple Blossom pattern. Service for 12. The cabinet had been painted off-white several times over.

The knives would stand at attention on the magnetic strip, handles up, cutting edges toward the window, backs flat, slapped against the magnet above the kitchen sink. I would hang a dried knife into its empty spot on the strip. Click-snap it would go into place like some kind of sucking magic was at work. I was always careful when I let the handle go, afraid that if I jerked it in my sometimes clumsy way that the knife would drop down like a guillotine and clatter into the sink and everyone would come running to see what the matter was.

That knife rack always gave me the willies. We’d do the dishes left-sink to right-sink, and I’d have to pass my hands under the rack to put the dishes in the strainer. I always did it fast, as if the strip would somehow lose its grip just at the moment I passed under its weaponry. But it always held, and the knives never fell.

I have that knife now. Its blade is no longer exceptionally sharp; its edge is scratched and slightly pitted from many inexperienced sharpenings (mine). The point is blunt. My palm curls easily around its wooden handle, around corners that are no longer corners but rounded and smooth and hand-oiled. The wood has lost its stain, bleached with detergent and washings to a natural gray-brown. Two brass rivets, gleaming golden, run through the sandwich of stainless-steel tang and wood. Their flat, embedded buttons feel cool to my thumb and forefinger. The rivets hold the blade true and firm. No hint of wobble in this knife.

Sometimes I still make ham and egg salad using this knife and the green Pyrex bowl. I’m usually halfway into the process before I realize why I’m doing it—because my spirit hankers for a connection to the childhood hours that I spent with my grandparents in the two-bedroom home that they’d had made specially for them in an assembly-line factory. (Grandma had even been able to choose the tile colors she wanted.)

The knife nestles into my adult palm, but it is Grandma’s hands that I see. Capable, thick-knuckled, manicured with false fingernails painted in the dark coral-red polish that was her best color. Grandma’s hands on the same knife, making the same motions of cutting ham and eggs, chopping onions and celery, scraping again and again onto the sides of Pyrex bowls, creating a tasty vat of nourishing, silent love.