Playground

Where is a mother’s playground? Where does she laugh with her children, learn how they feel, experiment with new ideas and run around and around. The answer is…………..?

Well maybe not so much these days but I know where my mum spent most of her time and where I spend most of my time doing these things. YES, the kitchen. At home we had an open kitchen/dining room designed living area. We would talk around the table, even when friends came to visit, it was around the table that we sat, talked and drank tea.

When we kids had problem that we wanted to talk to mum about we would go into the kitchen and talk it out. It didn’t matter that the minute we walked in we were given a chore to do, we wanted to unburden ourselves and mum was the one to listen. Mum was a good listener. Yes, we surprised her. I saw that look on her face many times. She didn’t always have an answer either, but then most of the time we didn’t need her to give us one. We just needed to talk and we would often come up with the answers ourselves as we voiced our concerns.

It was in the kitchen that mum made our butter and learnt how to make bread. These were the 1970’s and mum did a lot of these things to make sure that we had a better, cleaner and less processed diet and therefore better health. She was a mum that was years ahead of the times.

In my kitchen I managed quite a bit of exercise following my children around and around the table. It still is where we laugh, cry and warm ourselves in front the stove in the winter.

It is also where I remember most, the blessing of having a mother like mine.