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Monday, August 4, 2014

700th Post and a Snippet






She slumped into a chair at the drop-leaf table and gazed around the kitchen, at the vintage Magic Chef stove she’d begged Thomas for, a replacement to the avocado double-ovens his grandparents had installed in the 1970’s.  She’d loved how the hulking appliance conjured up images of aprons and long simmered stews, how its warming drawers heated the room in the winter; how it fit so well it was almost as if the room had been built around it. 
She gazed at the soapstone sink, the pot from the tomato soup she’d eaten.  Yesterday?  The day before? — took in the corner cupboard, the drifting cobwebs floating above the slate floor.   Around her, the house ticked and sighed and shifted, the home she’d tended to for years, surrounding her like an empty casing, a walnut shell, its hollows and paper membranes sculpting a memory of all that had once been there, all that once was.

11 comments:

Alex J. Cavanaugh said...

Congratulations on seven hundred posts.
That is really sad and lonely, especially for so few words.

J.B. Chicoine said...

That's a lovely recreation of the past! congrats on so many posts! :-)

Gail said...

So very sad. Your piece not your accomplishment. Congratulations on your number of posts.

Bish Denham said...

Oh, so poignant and sad yet beautiful too.

Here's a toast to 700!

Yvonne Osborne said...

Love your description of the ticking house. Love that stove!!

mshatch said...

Nice snippet; I feel a lot of longing for the past in that brief passage.

Very cool stove!

Dianne K. Salerni said...

What an interesting contrast of the homey, vintage stove she'd wanted and acquired and loved and the feeling of neglect and loneliness as she looks at it now. I wonder what changed for her.

Anonymous said...

Love the stove. A very evocative passage. I would love to read more.

Susan Gourley/Kelley said...

With my daughter leaving for four months overseas shortly and my boys all out on their own, you really hit my sad button with this one.

Jayne Martin said...

This is really lovely, Liza. Strong imagery put me right in the setting and feeling her loss.

Anne Gallagher said...

My grandmother had a stove just like that in her kitchen. It was green.

Great piece.

700? Really? Well, just wow.