Sitting in Grandma’s Kitchen

As we approach the holidays, I am bombarded by memories of my maternal grandmother and other now deceased relatives. I was looking at some pictures of barstools and other similar type chairs. When I saw one stool that is fairly similar to the stool you see in this picture, some poignant memories came back to my mind’s eye.

I called my mother’s mother Grandma Alice. From the time I was small, she lived in San Francisco in a two-bedroom apartment. My family and I went to visit her when I was eleven. When I was twenty, I spent the summer with her before attending San Francisco State University for fall semester of my junior year in college.

One of my favorite memories was sitting on a combination bar stool and step ladder in her kitchen. Hers was light yellow. I would sit on this stool and watch her cook. We would share stories and anecdotes with each other all the while.

My grandmother was a really good cook. So I would not only watch her cook, I would also take a few cooking lessons from her.

Years later, she moved to Tennessee to spend her last remaining years in the same city as my mother. That stool was one of the pieces of furniture that she kept. After she passed, I was given that stool.

I placed that stool in my kitchen. When the man I ended up marrying started courting me, he would sit on that stool and watch me cook. It brought back happy memories of my beloved grandmother.

Unfortunately, I no longer own that stool as I moved into my husband’s small log cabin. There just wasn’t room in the cabin for most of the furniture that I owned. It was kind of a wrench when I had to let that stool go. It felt a little bit like I was saying good-bye to Grandma Alice all over again.

Of course, there is always room in my memory bank. So when I see stools like the one pictured above, I can mentally re-live those days when I sat in Grandma’s kitchen on her yellow step ladder stool watching her cook.

I would love to hear some of your memory tales about stools and other pieces of furniture in your past that evoke the presence of people you love. Thanks for taking a walk with me down my particular memory lane.