Love from the kitchen

As the year draws to a close, the arrival of winter brings with it a desolate, chilly atmosphere. I remember when I was a child, whenever the winter winds blew like this, we children would gather in my grandmother's kitchen. The small kitchen was nestled deep in the garden, its pale green moss clinging to it, as if to indicate its age. And it truly was a long time ago. My grandmother used to say that my grandfather built it himself when they first got married; he carefully selected each brick and worked with the laborers to build the house and the kitchen. He passed away long ago, and my grandmother's hair has turned gray. The small house has been demolished and rebuilt many times due to the passage of time, but my grandmother has kept the kitchen as a way of preserving the memories she shared with him. Fortunately, the kitchen is quite sturdy; although time has gradually taken its toll on its exterior, it seems to withstand any wind and rain.

Photo: GC

It was an old kitchen, practically only my grandmother still cooked in it because it was quite isolated from the main house. When we were children, whenever a light drizzle fell on our heads, we would run to the kitchen annex as soon as we saw smoke rising from the small kitchen. Grandma still cooked with wood, and my uncle would chop wood and pile it up in the kitchen every weekend for her to light. Sometimes, Grandma and we would even gather fallen dry branches from the garden to put in a corner. Grandma said that food cooked with wood would taste better and smell more fragrant than food cooked on an electric or induction stove... although it was a bit more work. The inside of the kitchen was blackened by smoke, and we used to doodle indistinct shapes on the walls with charcoal.

When I was little, I often stayed with my grandmother. My maternal grandparents' family was very poor at the time. In the last days of the year, the sky was a gray, and biting winds swept in. The house, bare and open, wasn't warm enough. When it was just the two of us because the adults were at work, my grandmother would often take me to the back of the kitchen to light a fire to keep warm. We'd each sit on a small stool, watching the cold wind blow outside. Every night, a few hours before bedtime, my grandmother would throw red bricks directly into the burning fire, as if smoking them out. When the bricks were almost blackened, she would carefully take them out and place them in an iron basin under the bed. The warmth from those well-fired bricks kept me warm all night long.

Over the years, even though I studied far from home, what I remember most is the image of my grandmother in the small kitchen. I remember it not only because I grew up in the warmth of that place during my childhood, but also because whenever I returned home after being away for a long time, there would always be a grandmother leaning on her cane, stepping out of the small kitchen just to give me a fragrant, delicious baked potato.

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Source: https://baokhanhhoa.vn/van-hoa/sang-tac/202601/yeu-thuong-tu-chai-bep-55b2a93/