May 2019
We’re having the kitchen done. It needs it, but I didn’t want to. The cooker hasn’t worked for 7 years; one quarter of the hob gave up 3 years ago. The floor’s peeling, cutlery and knives fall out of the drawer bottoms (ideal with a toddler), and I have to fight, quite literally, to open the pan drawer. Then have to kick it shut. So I’m not being frivolous, Steve. It’s needed. I started discussions last summer with the kitchen fitter, with the aim of completing it and being warmer through last winter than we were the previous one. But I had to call a halt. I had already been uncertain, because I didn’t want to replace the kitchen that was ours. We danced endlessly in there when practicing our wedding dance. We ate in there, still gazing at each other and holding hands. That hadn’t worn off. You would come to me in the kitchen when you got in from work and put your arms round me. We did the chores together. You cooked porridge at the weekends. You were there. So I was afraid to change the kitchen and risk losing your presence in it. I want to feel you sat at the table with us, and if I redo the kitchen, perhaps you’ll be gone from there entirely.
Your anniversary last Autumn was not the time, so I called a halt.
It’s being done now though, but it’s been stressful. It’s a big deal, so I suppose always would be for anyone, but I’ve found the decision-making hard without you. That’s even with having decided from the very beginning that I wanted it to be as close a replica as possible to maximise the chances of still being able to feel you there. So same wall colours, same layout, same French Country feel. I’ve driven in spirograph circles around town taking sample cupboard doors to meet floor boards, to meet tiles, to meet worktops. Along the way I’ve discovered they don’t do tiles like we had; I finally chose, with help and advice and three days running spent at tile shops (Little Bug was NOT impressed). But I wasn’t convinced you’d like what I settled on. The best of the options, but you’d still have thought they looked distressed, and too ‘chintz’. (They weren’t, but you’d have felt they were). I spent hours online searching before settling. Then having chosen, days later, I found the PERFECT tiles. Exactly the look and size, perfect for the small area required above the hob. Got all excited. They were hand painted. £12 a tile. More than £1000. No go. I might have had a bit of a sulk and a cry about that. (Bear in mind none of these decisions has been easy or quick and that I’m always trying to choose for you as well as for me). Completely by luck days later I found an independent place nearby, took a ‘what have I got to lose’ last attempt trip, and found what I’d been looking for. This time a couple of pounds a tile, not hand painted, beautiful, subtle, exactly the French Chateau type print I wanted. Better, I think you’d really like them too.
I know what you didn’t like, and that’s made it easy to discount those things. But still the responsibility of choosing everything, and getting it right, has been tough. In the grand scheme my darling I do realise it’s a kitchen, and that it doesn’t matter in the way that choosing a preschool for Little Bug mattered. But it’ll be our kitchen for another 20 years, and I have to like it, and it has to work for us, and it has to have you in it. The thing is that under normal circumstances it might have been stressful, just as all big home projects are for anybody, but they’re also a lot of fun. We literally were able to start from scratch. A blank canvas! Whatever I (we) wanted! What I found though was that under the circumstances it’s harder to find things that “spark joy” (I’ll tell you about Marie Kondo another time). Other than Little Bug, ‘joy’ has sort of evaporated, so other things are just things of necessity. For many many months of planning there was nothing that I simply had to have, that I fell in love with immediately. I resent that, because some of that fun has been missing.
I am getting a little excited now though. I’ve watched the kitchen be ripped out and then retake shape; the tiles are going in today, and actually I really am looking forward to seeing them in place, with the beautiful new floor and oak shelf. I’ll put the things I want back in place, and then stand at the sink and ask you what you think.
I think you’ll like it.
xxx
Letters to a Small Baby 