With the holiday season over, it’s time to focus. Time to close up the drunk kitchen and get back to writing, and so I have. Take a quick coffee break with me and visit my drunk kitchen in the post below, written a few years ago on my personal blog.
Recently, my parents bought their dream retirement home. They love it, and we couldn’t be happier for them. It’s a great place.
That said, we know it’s sometimes difficult for adults to lose their childhood homes, and my family is no exception. Sometimes, we confess to missing the old house. We get wrapped up in the memories and forget that we left behind only a structure. Walls, windows, and a roof. But unlike my siblings, I enjoy change, so there’s just one thing that I miss. The original drunk kitchen.
You know about the drunk kitchen because you have one, too. It’s the place where moms, sisters, daughters, grandmothers, aunts, nieces, and girlfriends gather with bottles of wine. Conversation flows while dishes get washed and put away without a thought.
We share secrets, give advice, laugh, and cry. Sometimes we find ourselves reprimanding our daughters or defending our sisters. I like my sisters-in-law when we are there. It’s the place where new ideas are born and where we adore newborn babies. It’s where we speak our dreams out loud for the first time and receive well-meaning shoves forward. It’s the embodiment of sisterhood, the drunk kitchen.
My mom has always been the keeper of our family’s drunk kitchen. I can’t say why, but that magic doesn’t come to my kitchen. We drink wine and wash dishes in mine, too. We talk and laugh and have a good time. Still, that damn magic doesn’t show up. After every failed attempt to create the next sisterhood sanctuary, I secretly panic and worry about where my daughter will find her drunk kitchen when she’s older and needs the support.
Before my parents’ house hit the market, I met them there one last time. I watched the realtor inspect the rooms and make notes to prepare for an open house. The furniture and wall hangings were gone. Only three kitchen chairs remained. We sat in those chairs, my mom, my little girl, and me. We talked and we laughed, leaving one last memory embedded in the walls of that old drunk kitchen.
Mom’s kitchen in the new place is lovely, and against my wishes, it captured the magic that still eludes mine.