Hiraeth (Home)
by denny bastian 2013
Wistfully staring at the rain on my kitchen window,
I imagine mum’s yellow white hair, framing face.
Her back is slightly hunched as she bends over the kitchen
sideboard. She is patting together with a mother’s hands,
rice with ground beef, small chunks of cubed ham for taste
and selected spices in her favourite bowl, slightly chipped,
with big red flowers. Nearby from a huge grey pot boiling
on the stove, lid slightly askew, wafts clouds of steam
and the odour of extra-large leafy summer cabbage.
It’s hot in the kitchen. When most families in the crushing
heat of August, are sitting on a blanket beneath the cottonwood
trees at the lake, dining on potato salad and cold deli meats,
removed from blue Coleman coolers, mum has the oven on.
She is making cabbage rolls. Sniffing constantly from the high
humidity in the room she mixes, then turns to the stove to remove
the cabbage pot. Placing it on an old singed oven mitt beside
her flowery bowl, she wraps the meat and rice inside the cabbage
leaves which are still too hot for the average mortal to touch.
She carefully assigns each according to size and volume
to a particular spot in the roasting pot like she is packing
for a long trip to somewhere, or we’re moving yet again.
(Dad says we don’t have to move for quite a while this time –
Good, ‘cause I’m tired of trying to make friends every year in a
new school). Then she pours several cans of whole tomatoes on
top, places the lid and slides the whole thing in the oven, the
burned black oven grate previously arranged by her so the
tall roasting pan slides in perfectly with a scrape and clatter.
“Kachunk!” Hot air blows into the kitchen when the door closes.
Mum learned to make cabbage rolls from my Grandmother
when I was still a young boy. But Gram-ma didn't call them
cabbage rolls then – she called them by a Ukrainian name;
the name is “ holubtsi.” Gram-ma was my father’s mother.
When I was little we lived on the same five acre orchard property.
I loved my Gram-ma; she made peppermint cookies and
coffee cake, she always kept peppermints in a glass dish, and
never stopped me from taking one or two. She often said I was
too skinny and should EAT, EAT! It's a Ukrainian grandmother
thing I'm sure. Gram-ma would be proud. I'm no longer skinny.
Gram-ma surely loved me. She often tried to tell my mum how to
raise me, treat me, forgive me. She saved me from more than
one licking or two which I must admit I thoroughly deserved.
She wore a large paisley print apron which when threatened
I could cling onto and hide behind. My mother didn't like that but
she respected Gram-ma enough not to tear me away from her.
My mother most often spanked me later which kept me on the
straight and narrow.My father never spanked my butt even once.
Instead he whacked me upside the head with his hand.
It stung, oh man it stung. I threw a 2 x 4 back at him once.
When I was in my twenties I was quite athletic. I would rather
play ball than eat or work. I was never the super star which I
longed to be but I was more than adequate and better than average
I would say; a boy could be satisfied with that. More than forty
years later I still recall the slow motion moments of the great catch,
the clutch hit, the peer talk of awarding the most valuable player
in the tournament. The articles in the sports columns of the local
newspaper, “MY NAME, MY NAME!” Saved in posterity.
MY YOUTH, MY YOUTH! Where did it go? If I could go back home
I would pay more attention, perhaps do it better, but mostly write it down.
Meanwhile, the rain flows like little rivers down my window.
