Donovan Kelly

My first kitchen was very small, but then so was I. For my first two years I was an only child, and the world of this small kitchen revolved around me and life was good, very good.

My parents worried that I needed a companion. To ease their mind, I asked Santa Claus for a puppy dog. I got a sister. I stopped believing in Santa Claus.

Adding messy insult to injury, my little sister turned into a dunker. In our small kitchen there was no room for a messy dunker. When my sister dunked her toast in her hot chocolate, we all were splashed. Six inches away from me, a slimy butter oil slick would spread across the top of her hot chocolate. Bits of butter-coated dead toast floated in the oil slick, like dying seabirds caught in the wake of a ruptured oil tanker.

Obviously, we needed a bigger kitchen. My parents found the perfect kitchen in a 15-room, 60-year-old farm house. Minor drawbacks included a lack of electricity, indoor plumbing, central heating and nearby playmates. I repeatedly suggested a dog, and repeatedly was given brothers to go with the aforementioned sister.

Despite the nagging communication problem, we five kids did share the joy of awakening to winter blizzards in unheated bedrooms in Northern Pennsylvania. Arctic winds from Canada blew freely through the quaint walls. The winds carried with them frozen bits of Lake Erie that pelted the windows and piled up into deep snow drifts. The temperature always seemed to be below freezing . . . and that was inside my bedroom. Some might questioned that my bedroom could ever be so cold. I would only point to the skim of ice on the goldfish bowl.

Except I would never point. Not for anybody. On such winter mornings, I would not venture any part of my body outside the six layers of blankets until absolutely necessary. Better to snuggle down into the warm spot I had worked all night to create. Better to wait until I heard Mom go downstairs. Better to linger until she had time to turn up the heat on the kerosene heater and to bring the kitchen back to life again. Because no matter how cold the house, Mom would make the kitchen warm.

It took me years to realize that the warmth of the kitchen owed a lot more to Mom than to kerosene. And more years passed before I understood that she did not do all this just for King Dad. Yes, she got up every morning before Dad to make sure his breakfast was ready, his coffee hot and his lunch packed fresh for work. And yes, she even turned on the hot water faucet in the bathroom to a slow drip so that the water would be warm enough when Dad finally arrived in a grumble to shave. All this she did before the King was even out of bed.

Mom was spoiling Dad. I remember thinking this as a young teenager, so eager to explain life to others. I remember pointing out to Mom that it was wrong to spoil Dad like this. That it wasn't fair to her. I pointed this out to Mom in a righteous indignation that was warmed by a warm kitchen in a cold house. I scolded Mom as she poured me fresh hot chocolate and served me my favorite cinnamon toast, already buttered. And I fell silent when Dad entered the room.

I'm ashamed to admit how many years passed before I realized that Mom had been spoiling me along with Dad and my non-canine siblings. No matter how cold the house, Mom kept the kitchen warm and special for each of us, be we shavers, dunkers or scolders. Even in the middle of a Pennsylvania winter when goldfish bowls froze over and toast was too freely dunked, we knew love because we knew a perfect warm kitchen.