Today I think of our island. Not the tropical variety, although wouldn’t I love to own one right about now, in the middle of this Minnesota winter? Instead, I’m thinking about the nine-foot-long feature, capped in quartz, stretching across our kitchen.
Long before our house was fully realized—when it was still mostly an architectural idea sketched on paper—I had a vision. Husband stood at the stove, cooking for the masses, and I wiped down the countertops. Joy fueled our movements. The French adjective quotidien, meaning daily, springs to mind as I recall the vision, and the word frames the scene. What’s more daily than a kitchen island in the center of everything?
We use our island hard, and I assume discussions will happen around it. When we bought the house, though, I imagined the bulk of heartfelt exchanges and weighty thoughts would be birthed in the sunroom. What I didn’t anticipate was that our kitchen focal point would host stories so soon, so often, so deep, and from the least likely. But so it is.
“I wasn’t a good husband early on,” the handyman says, backing out from under our kitchen sink. He straightens to standing, splays his palms on our kitchen island, and switches his gaze between Husband and me. His son, his associate, stands nearby, attention trained on his dad now. “I neglected my wife and family. I wanted my work more than I wanted them.”
The older man’s eyes turn glossy, and I wonder how his sleuthing out a solution for our electrical situation (the dishwasher and garbage disposal had been wired into the same outlet) could bring a personal story.
“We got married pretty fast, since my wife was already pregnant with this one," he goes on, thumbing toward his son.
“This is the first I’m hearing about it,” the son says, his expression neutral.
The older man waves away his grown kid’s comment. “We were a mess, but that was then. God shook me into the man I am today.” He swallows a quaver. “Hard as you-know-what, but I wouldn’t change it for anything.”
Gratefulness overshadows my surprise at the sudden story. This man doesn’t know us, and yet he speaks. I glimpse Husband’s reaction, and it matches my own. The electrical issue doesn’t seem so important now, and we keep listening—to him and to all the others who come after him in the following days, weeks, and months. (Because we have a lot of goings-on over here.)
And the island listens too.
(Come back next week for more island stories.)
