THE "LIZ'S KITCHEN" MAGNET

"The kitchen was her happy place."

One of my earliest memories is standing next to my mom as she washed and diced potatoes at the kitchen sink. She’d look down and hand me a piece of raw potato and I would put it in my mouth, noting the earthy taste, delighted by the crunch. Sometimes she handed me jelly beans, small jewels of sweetness, or carrots cut in half. I would eat away the carrot’s outer layer to get to the light-orange inner core.

I learned that the kitchen was a place of mystery, where ingredients were transformed into delicious dishes. It was also a place of nurturance, as Mom handed me choice bits of food, a preview of the wonderful dinner to come. 

Mom’s job as a nurse could be tiring, kids could be challenging, marriage unsatisfying, but she always had great results from her cooking. The kitchen was her happy place. Though she was shy in public, and had comfort-food taste in TV (Little House on the Prairie and The Waltons were two favorites), in the kitchen Mom was bold and sophisticated, afraid of no recipe. She made refined food—coq au vin, raspberry trifle—and proudly served it to an ungrateful husband and three daughters who might have been happier with McDonald’s but recognized the specialness of her elaborate meals.

This magnet showed up after the divorce, probably a purchase from her favorite store, Kohl’s. It lived on her fridge, holding pictures of her grandchildren, marking her claim to a space that had always been hers, to treasures she alone could offer.

The thing about my mother is that Joy of Cooking wasn't just the name of her bible. It was her truth. I remember her face as she watched us eat, the joy she got from our pleasure, the gift of sustaining us with food.

She died of lung cancer in 2015, just months before the approval of an immunotherapy drug that might have saved her life. During her illness I brought her cake and caramel donuts, in the hope they’d offer a small burst of joy or at least solace. I wanted her to feel the way I always had in her kitchen, which will live forever in my memory as a place of abundance and love.

—Ellen Birkett Morris

My mom, Liz Waldon, and I in Liz’s kitchen, 1998 (neither of us could ever keep our eyes open in pictures). The magnet is on the right side of the fridge, out of the frame.

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Ellen Birkett Morris is the author of the novel Beware the Tall Grass, winner of the 2023 Donald L. Jordan Award for Literary Excellence, and Lost Girls: Short Stories, winner of the Pencraft Award. Her essays have appeared in Newsweek, AARP’s The Ethel, Oh Reader magazine, and on National Public Radio.

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