The Kitchen Desk
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The Kitchen Desk
What if it's not about clearing the clutter?
November 30, 2021
Dear Friend,
One of the things I love about the largely-unchanged 1950s home we moved into last August is the little kitchen desk. It’s vinyl and chrome and wood, and it’s tucked into the dark corner leading to the hallway, next to the microwave and broom closet.
We bought our home from the brother and sister who’d grown up there in the 1960s. Their mother had just died. They were letting go of their family home, and our unconventional walkthrough was their trip down memory lane, peppered with sweet stories and anecdotes as they showed us around. All the neighborhood kids would come over in the winter and we’d rollerskate here, they told us in the finished basement, with its orange vinyl benches. Remember how Dad used to sleep down here in the summer? they laughed as we marveled over its coolness. This is where Mom had her big vegetable garden. This is the workbench Dad built.
This is where we used to do our homework, they said of the desk, and I had immediately pictured our own kids working there, close by while Lyle and I cooked dinner. I pictured the kitchen desk in the home where I grew up, too, its neat navy-blue top and mail basket where my mom paid bills, the drawer where I rifled for postage stamps and Post-Its, all of it wedged next to the big tub of dog food and the cat’s waterdish.
A kitchen desk is a wheelhub. It’s the whirling center of family life— noisy and messy and prone to collecting a constantly revolving collection of next-step things. Library books that need to go back, mail-order returns. A broken toy and a tube of superglue. A gift certificate for the teacher next to a peanut butter jar full of change. All the things we do to serve our families, to keep the wheel spinning.
I’m a tidier, and the neverending clutter drives me insane if I let it. But today it made me smile. It made me look around my house and realize that I’m in the middle of a kitchen-desk season of life, as the mother of three young children. There are always next-step things to do, half-started projects on various surfaces of the house. All that we do here is in service of raising three new humans, and (hopefully!) helping them become people who live lives of kindness and service.
Maybe December is a kitchen-desk month. Hurtling toward January, filled with the pressures of holiday events and traditions, it’s where all the odds and ends collect. At the same time, for me at least, it’s the part of the year where I most want to slow down and get quiet. I want to close my eyes and remember what— and who— is most important, and look to the year to come with that focus in mind. And I want to do puzzles and snuggle with my kids near the fireplace.
I wonder if, instead of thinking of this month and this desk as something to clear off and finish up, I can try to treat it as the center of things.
In the liturgical year, Advent marks the first day of the new year. We begin the countdown to Christmas— this beautiful, difficult waiting for Love to be born in the most marginal, forgotten place, in a world just as full of pressure and danger.
How will we make room? How will we take our messy, complicated lives and put them in the way and the service of Love, however that looks in our lives, just as they are? Broken toys and dried-up playdough and all. I’d love to hear what you think.
Love,
Melissa
Writing + Making
Joy in Four Parts. We took our first trip in almost two years last week, down to California to spend time with family. The drive was both easier than we thought it would be, with three kids in a minivan for ten+ hours, and harder than we’d imagined, watching the landscape fill with so many blackened trees from the fires of our earth’s climate crisis. The forest and the meadow where we were married were still there, though. I wrote a little about taking the kids there, and unexpected joy, with a prompt from this year’s #rhythmwriting collection.
Homemade treats to give. This year I have felt especially weary of the consumer side of Christmas. Shane Claiborne put it so well recently: “Jesus said, ‘Sell your possessions and give the money to the poor.’ It is a strange thing that we celebrate his birth by buying things for people who already have so much, in a world where so many have so little.” Want to make stuff and spend time together instead? Here are some easy giftable recipes we are trying out: simple syrup, vanilla extract, the ultimate pumpkin loaf, homemade orange ornaments, and cinnamon dough ornaments.
My continuing quest to feed my 3-year-old vegetables. I wrote last month about some of my successful veggie-masquerade recipes for Robin, our resident picky eater whose current defaults are quesadillas, bagels, and oatmeal. I’ve been enjoying Easy. Whole. Vegan. by Melissa King, especially this recipe for chocolate peanut butter cookies that contain black beans. Yep, beans. And nobody could tell.
Loving + Learning
Gifts of service. Along with baking cookies and sipping cocoa, we are slipping a few opportunities to be of service into our Advent calendar. I’ve been slowly gathering ideas for ways kids can give to others during a month that is often too cold and lonely for far too many. I loved Kimberly Knowle-Zeller’s recent IG share about showing love to the many delivery workers who are putting in long hours this month. I think my kids will love picking out some snacks and helping me set up a little refreshment stand on our porch. We will also try to draw pictures and write letters to elders, choose coats for newly-arrived refugee families, and pass along some toys and clothes to neighbors in our Buy Nothing group. What are some ways you like to include your kids in offering gifts of service? I’d love to hear your ideas!
The Tea Dragon series. I’ve written before about how much I love New Zealand graphic Novelist Kay O’Neill. (Her book Princess, Princess Ever After is a repeat favorite in our house.) We’ve been making our way through the three-part Tea Dragon graphic novel series, about small, cute dragons that grow different types of tea-leaves as hair. (!!) The books’ inclusive storylines make my heart sing.
What Happened Miss Simone? We listened to Nina Simone a lot on our road trip, and it inspired us to watch the 2015 documentary What Happened Miss Simone? This film really moved me with its portrayal of Simone’s extraordinary life and gifts. It made me want to seek out even more of her music, particularly her work during the Civil Rights era.