Our Red-Handled Rolling Pin: An Enhanced Memory
30
Our Red-Handled Rolling Pin: An Enhanced Memory
30eBook
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781504910897 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | AuthorHouse |
| Publication date: | 05/20/2015 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 30 |
| File size: | 7 MB |
| Age Range: | 4 - 8 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Our Red-Handled Rolling Pin
By Mary Elizabeth Kenney, Federico A. Valdivieso
AuthorHouse
Copyright © 2015 Mary Elizabeth KenneyAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5049-1088-0
CHAPTER 1
Mostly I liked to play with dolls–baby dolls. Just baby dolls. So you would think I would be telling you about my favorite doll, Jimmy. I carried Jimmy around with me on my hip throughout my young-girl days. He was about the size of a real baby. I told everyone he was six months old and would be one year old on his birthday, which was May 20th–same as mine. But it isn't Jimmy I want to tell you about, except to say that he sat at the kitchen table with me. He was secured to the chair by a dishtowel tied to the rungs as we drank cups of tea–first pretend, eventually real–throughout the years of my childhood and beyond. So a remembered, even treasured, object was not my baby doll, Jimmy, but instead the place where he sat with me. That is where my story begins and ends.
At the kitchen table.
I am Mary Elizabeth Pohl and then Kenney. My mother was Margaret Patricia Crowley and then Pohl. Her mother, my grandmother, was Mary Rose O'Brien and then Crowley. Then means later when girls get married. Sometimes a woman changes her name. Her new name is the same as her husband's.
Come with me to our kitchens and sit at our tables.
First, my table when I was a girl.
Second, my mother's table when she was a girl.
Third, my daughter's table when she was a girl.
My kitchen table when I was a girl in the 1950's, a long time ago ...
Mom's demitasse set always sat motionless–perched prettily on the top shelf of the china closet. It was "for good" Mom said. I didn't know what a demitasse was, but my sisters and I were always fascinated with it. There was a tea pot, but Mom said it was for coffee, which we weren't allowed to drink. The tea pot was decorated with the tiniest most delicate flowers of many pastel shades and variations of colors covering every inch. Violet, tree green, buttercup yellow, and–my most favorite of all–baby blue graced the pot and every cup. Its handle had to be held very carefully, with fingers placed around its thin curve. If not, the unthinkable could happen! Cups dressed in identical delicate blooms sat on the shelf–one, two, three, four circling the pot in a semicircle. Like a fortress, they protected the queen pot that towered above. A sugar bowl larger than the tea cups invited the drinker to over-sweeten each cup. Why so big? Maybe demitasse coffee was very bitter and needed lots and lots of sugar.
Not my tea. Plain tea–hold the sugar. Plain tea, please.
But I pretended to pour a little cream from the cream pitcher that perfectly matched the tea pot and cups. How else would one have a lovely tea party?
"Can we have a tea party, Mom? Can we use your pretty flowered demitasse set and pretend we are having tea with the queen of England? You can be the queen, Mom! You should be the queen," my sisters and I begged, as we often did.
Mom never used the demitasse set but said we would someday. Sometimes she did let us use it for our tea parties if we pleaded, promising we would be ever so careful and telling her she could sit right in her favorite chair at the kitchen table. She would be the queen. Today she was in a very good mood and not too tired from her job at the hospital.
She said, "Okay, just be careful, girls. That set has been in the family for generations."
We assured her we would be very careful as I gingerly handed each piece to Janet, my younger sister, standing on tip-toes to reach the glass shelf of the china closet. Our big sister, Susan, watched from her chair at the kitchen table. She made me nervous shaking her head as though she expected my hand to slip off the teapot.
The table was set. Janet and I folded the napkins into fours, so they looked very dainty like our tea service. I had the idea to cut the Fig Newtons into fours too. That way they looked like the pretty little pastries served for the queen's tea. We were ready for our tea party. I got the plastic Tupperware measuring cup with the spout and filled it with water. Next, I lifted the lid of the tea pot and gently rested it on the tablecloth as I poured the water into the china pot. We were happy with our pretend tea. It was only pretend because we were not allowed to pour hot water into the precious demitasse pot. It was verrry old. But we were allowed to drink tea as we had since we were babies. Today pretend tea was welcome because it became real when poured from our mother's china demitasse pot.
"May I pour you a cup, Madame Queen?" I politely asked Mom.
"I would love a cup, my dear," she answered.
"Would you like a pastry as well?" Janet added, placing a fig square on Mom's plate.
We lifted our tea cups to our mouths, sipping daintily and trying not to slurp because that would have been rude. We didn't want to ruin the special tea party. And if we slurped, we might not hear all the tales we loved to hear.
"Tell us about Grandma Mary Rose, Mom. Please!" I pleaded.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Our Red-Handled Rolling Pin by Mary Elizabeth Kenney, Federico A. Valdivieso. Copyright © 2015 Mary Elizabeth Kenney. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse.
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