Asnieres Sur Seine
It's warm and the smell of chips cooking in the large, oily, stained pot on the gas stove makes my stomach rumble. I sit, naked, wet and soaped up in the kitchen sink, my mother by my side busy washing me with a large cloth. I glance sideways, eyes burning a little from a stray soap bubble and see my sister sitting at our small kitchen table looking at her school homework. "Time to lay the table!" my mother tells my sister. Dutifully, she puts books away and begins to put plates on the table. My mother leaves me in the sink to quickly put the steaks on the stove in an old pan as stained as the chip one. While sitting in the sink, feeling rather cold by now, I notice how small our kitchen is. I am only five and small myself but I feel safe, nurtured, loved and now very clean, in our small family kitchen.
The table is against a wall with 4 chairs squashed around it. It has a floral tablecloth on it which just fits. The stove is large and the chips are bubbling merrily in the old oil filling the air with a very familiar smell. My sister is still busy putting things on the table and my mother is quickly finishing up my sink bath and wrapping a towel around me. She plonks me on the floor and leaves me there so she can go and turn the steaks in the pan. The merging of the smells of chips and frying steaks are delicious and I am eager to start my supper.
I see my father walking into the kitchen, holding his gin in one hand and a cigarette in the other. I can see he is hungry as he is looking at the food on the stove with a smile on his face. It is now crowded in our small kitchen. Me, getting dressed on the floor, my sister, busy now with putting glasses on the table, (small tumblers which probably contain more wine than a wine glass when we do have wine and which, I would think, pleases my father no end), my mother, lifting the chips out of the pot and turning the steaks again all at the same time and my father, hovering, waiting, his cigarette smoke wafting all around us.
We are about to sit and eat when the doorbell chimes. My mother walks to the door lifting her eyes to the sky and lets my aunt in who has come to visit from across the road. My father happily notices she is holding a bottle of red wine. She gets a chair from the lounge and squeezes in at the table which has now been pulled away from the wall. We are now really squashed and we have to hold our elbows in. The steaks and chips get shared out, the wine is poured and I get my very own small tumbler of wine mixed with a lot of water. My father gulps down his gin and starts on the red wine. I hear them all chatting together and laughing and as I observe this convivial family kitchen I feel content, loved and happy. We do not have much be we have love and laughter. The food is little but it's filling and tastes marvelous, the wine is cheap but goes straight to my little head. I fall asleep at the kitchen table, my head on my folded arms listening to my family's laughter. I am content, loved, tummy filled with steak and chips and my head spinning ever so slightly from the wine. Listening to my family laughing and chatting around me, I know I am safe.
