After dusting off and posting the essay about my mother's kitchen, I reread it this morning and tweaked some oversights. Again, I wrote this many, many years ago.

The prologue I included is essential disclosure regarding the reality of my mother's kitchen. Only the first two paragraphs of the entire post are true. The remaining paragraphs are pure invention, and per the comments you've left, I invented well. :)

I wrote about the kitchen I dreamt of having.

Bex, your comments spoke to my own experience as a child. My mother's kitchen was a nightmare in so many ways. She never intended it be a sad place, but it was. The sadness was inevitable. She couldn't help it. My mother was schizophrenic and alcoholic.

Throughout my childhood there were glorious moments, but they were brief. My heart can retrieve the good memories easily because those were the only ones my mother remembered in her old age. She was an expert revisionist, or perhaps too ashamed to re-live the terribleness of our home. In her later years she didn't drink. She was just un-medicated crazy, which was much more manageable and forgivable.

During my childhood, my mother's fridge held lots of rotting food. The counters oozed with rancid butter and toppled with breadcrumbs carted away in military precision by ants. Thanksgiving Day once included the turkey sliding its fatty self across the kitchen floor. On a daily basis, my sister and I pretty much fed ourselves. I can't recall my mother baking one single thing. She sat in her room, shades drawn tight, and drank and smoked all day.

I reveal this peek because I never meant to conceal the truth. I think you all know me well enough - I vomit it all up for the reader to read. *laughing*

A large part of me is tickled that my writing was so convincing, but perhaps just like me, some of you wished that your mother's kitchens had been a roundhouse of goodness, too.

Despite the additional disclosure, I always want people to know that I adored my mother. I loved her. I miss her so desperately every day. As uncanny as it sounds, I've been smart enough to appreciate her insanity as a gift. She taught me to be fearless with creativity... that even polka dots and plaids go well together if one is so inclined.

Not too long before she died, she called and said, "Irene, you were the love of my life." Now, how cool is that! Her kitchen was a train wreck, but I've always known she loved me.