Once a year, my mother used to take a week and go away by herself. Usually on a retreat to a monastry or convent. Though I am sure she would have gone absolutely anywhere that promised peace, quiet and no rowdy children. Someone else did the cooking and cleaning and she rested her mind and reconnected with herself. What a perfect idea for any mother.
Usually Great Aunty Del came up from Down South and took over the house. I think I told you that one year Mum came home from her wonderful retreat to find that Dad was building a wee row-boat in the downstairs kitchen. I have no idea where Aunty Del was that time. It had been a rainy week. And Dad had been unable to work on his dinghy and mind the kids at the same time, so he had maneuvered the boat through the big french doors and into the kitchen and continued to work on it in there. It was made from laminated contrasting hardwoods laid strip to strip and glued and clamped and curved at each step. Then planed and sanded. Mum came home to a kitchen floor full of pungent coiled ringlet wood-shavings, the table covered in tools so they were out of reach of little fingers and a pile of kids playing in that most wonderful of freshly scraped wood smells, no doubt shrieking like banshees and high on fumes. I cannot even sharpen a pencil now without thinking of that beautiful wee row-boat.
When I was a young Mum in my first marriage, I came home with groceries on another rainy day, in another time, to a motorbike on its stand in the hallway in various stages of dismemberment and an unknown piece of machinery from the motor on the kitchen table. It was unapologetically greasy, filthy and dismantled, sitting proudly on the pine kitchen table on a scrap of newspaper, a good once white tea towel black with oil draped over it.
My mother and I in our seperate generations, in our different period costumes, our clothes twenty years apart, her cotton dress cinched at the waist wearing stockings and court shoes and my flimsy skirt too short with bare legs and sandals, my hair abandoned to curl down my back and hers cut neatly to the nape of her neck, my mother with red lipstick, me in creamy pink, her eyes flashing green, mine pale blue – viewed in a Split Screen on the television of our memories – both sighed, shook our heads slowly, thought ah well, reached for our aprons on the hook behind the door and said honey, can you get that thing out of here, I need to start dinner then sent the children to wash their hands.
Here is the lovely milking machine sitting on the dining room table. 
Isn’t it beautiful. Not a speck of grease or bad behaviour.
Last night we ate our spaghetti and meatballs for dinner. Home made pasta made with our own eggs, spaghetti sauce from our own preserved summer tomatoes and meatballs from our own beef freshly ground yesterday morning, herbs from the window, my home made parmesan, with a wee side of pesto that I made in the summer and stored in a jar in the freezer. Well you get the picture. We all love food, and you all know the perfect uncomplicated pride of growing, preparing and eating your own food. But we had to eat this most sumptious of gentle feasts with our plates on our laps gazing at the reflections in the milking machine, because it is so lovely and it is on the dining room table. And we were not allowed to put food close to it in case of greasy fingers!
Life is so simple really when you get down to it. (laughter)
Another overcast morning is unfolding. No sunrise again. It rained all day yesterday once the temperature had risen. Today, between farm chores, we are off in search of more old recycled timber to finish the work in the barn.
Good morning.
c
The Kitchen's Garden 
110 responses to “The Things you find on the dining room Table”
WOW! This is great job… Good Luck. In here it is snowing today… Thank you dear Cecilia, have a nice day and weekend, with my love, nia
I don’t know why i never thought it snowed in istanbul, I need to study my geography! Good evening Nia! c
Good Morning Celi. Now you know why my Pete has a garage, otherwise I too what have all strange things in the most inappropriate places inside our home.
Your milking machine is very smart! I really do wonder how dear Daisy will take to this being milk thing…
🙂 Mandy
We have plenty of time to worry about daisy and the milking! Actually maybe we should worrying NOW! c
Well, at least it doesn’t look used yet. That would send me through the roof. And to think I yelled at DH for putting a container of ice melt on the kitchen table the other day when it was icy out. Men!
No it is all brand new, though the pump is reconditioned however the pump is not my department! c
There’s much good to be said about retreating and meditating. For me and other family members, it’s a cabin at the edge of the sugarbush overlooking the farm. Also a good spot for writing.
Nice little milking machine you have there.
Farmer’s regards,
Jim
http://vermontverse.wordpress.com
Oh a cabin for writing in sounds perfect right about now Jim! I hope you have sunshine today.. c
The totally home produced dinner sounds wonderful, and I am gobsmacked that you even produce your own Parmesan. I don’t think I’d survive in the Wild West.
Parmesan is actually not difficult to make it is the WAITING for a year before you can eat it that is hard! c
You remind me of children who take their favorite Christmas toy to the Christmas Dinner table. 🙂 Love the image of you both dining on homemade pasta with a milking machine as centerpiece. I give your Mum credit for getting away for one week a year. I bet many Mums from that time, mine included, would have done the same if they could. I don’t know how many would be as stoic if they returned to find a boat in the kitchen, though.
And it was not a small boat either! The pasta is getting better, still working on getting the dough right though! c
That milking machine is a thing of beauty. Eventually it will have to go outside, but for now enjoy its pristine state. 🙂
yes, it cannot live on the table forever!! no matter how pretty.. c
When he was a teenager the storty goes, my grandfather built a rowing dory in the basement, and then discovered, to his dismay, that it was too wide to go out the doorway! His mother allowed him to remove the cinderblocks either side of the door to get it out. (I’m assuming that she also made him fix the doorway after…I can see her in her period clothing, shaking her head just as your mum, and you in that split screen.) Doing some quick math in my head, this would have been over a hundred years ago! He then, the story goes, rowed this same dory from Newburyport MA out to the Isles of Shoals, a row that would have taken him several miles out in the open ocean to a small cluster of islands off the coast of Rye, NH.
Your milking machine is truly a thing of beauty!
I can appreciate your good eating. We also have a freezer full of lovely marinara sauces all frozen into dinner-sized portions, as well as jars of jams and jellies, sauces, salsas, you name it. I always feel safer with a full pantry of things I put up myself…
I agree Maggie, i love my preserves, in fact i like them so much sometimes i hate to eat them! If that makes any sense.. oh and what a great story, does anyone know WHY he built a boat to row all that way?.. c
Yay! Love that milking machine. My first husband built a sailing boat in our small dining room, and had to take the French window and its frame out to make room for the boat to get out. Before we were married he had built a kayak in his bedroom, with the same house-destroying result. I have been known to decoke the engine of my 1933 Austin 7 in the kitchen of my Mum’s house….
My goodness, you people are as crazy as my dad! c
Well..the dining table is a nice wide space at just the right height! I’m looking at my dining room table right now and it isn’t a pretty picture!
Oh dear.. a paper war?.. c
great post! this weather is crazy. it was 60 degrees when i woke up at 4:30 and now it is in the low 30’s 4 hours later!
OK that IS crazy.. a body could start DIStrusting the weather! c
That’s a milking machine? Oh my!
Oh my indeed! c
We have a proverb here that, directly translated, goes something like as the sun rises and sets, days turn a daughter into a mother. It is usually applied to remind girls that they grow up too one day…etc, etc. I enjoyed your story, as always.
OH NO, you mean i am turning INTO my MOTHER!!! (laughter) c
It sounds like we are having the same kind of weather…snow last night having been washed away by hard rains this morning. I’m glad it is rain as it would be a lot of snow if colder. We are both looking back to earlier times today. Memories are special.
Everything is a memory.. and I love this warm weather! Isn’t it a great winter for a change.. c
What a beautiful milking machine – never seen one up close and personal! 😉 Love your memories! There are such distinctions between generations – and you beautifully described them! You gave me great mind pictures!
Thank you, that was a cool thing to say, you have a great day! c