by Teresa Kellmer
Reach into the cabinet across from the stove, the one with the doors that never close quite right. The one that’s scary to reach into because you’re never sure quite what wildlife will be in there. The one that holds the small, cream colored, ridge sided, long chipped ceramic bowl – the dumpling bowl.
You get the bowl for Grandma and you put it on the counter above the cabinet that has the doors that don’t close. You have to stand on your toes to place it there. Even on a real person it would reach above their waist.
So you put the bowl on the counter that’s covered with blue flowered plastic paper and you turn to Grandma and watch her take a fork from the aluminum cast cabinet drawer by the door that leads to the porch and out to the mango trees.
You stand by the new frost-free refrigerator that’s shoved into the far corner of the kitchen and watch her pick up the square tin that holds the flour on the stove with the other tins standing guard. She takes the old glass pyres measuring cup and scoops flour into the dumpling bowl.
She pours high filtered, pristine dream, chlorine clean water, carted to her house by my mother in plastic gallon jugs into the old glass pyres measuring cup and adds it, drop by drop, to the flour.
She takes the fork in her right hand and picks up the small chipped cream colored dumpling bowl with her left and beats the contents with a firm, round, solid stroke. The fork on the bowl makes a thick back beat rhythm.
We stand in front of the stove, across from the cabinet where the bowl is kept and I watch her lift the glass lid of the heavy silver cast iron casserole dish and the steam rises from the pot and clouds the lid. I smell the chicken simmering.
She takes a fork full of raw dumpling and drops it into the pot. One by one the dumplings form. She puts the lid back on and we go play cards.
[typography font=”Droid Sans Mono” size=”9″ size_format=”px”]Author bio: T. Kellmer learned to write poetry from her father. She lives in Monroe with her fabulous husband and 2 bizarrely awesome children. She is a student in the ALDAC program here at BC.[/typography]