My favorite place and what it means to me.
Pieces of fresh white bread, soft and fluffy, as if they were patches of white clouds stacked up to the heavens. Fat rolls of gourmet sausages, bratwurst, chipolatas and luscious that were fat and filled to the point of explosion. Jellies, marmalades, jams, preserves of all sorts. The exotic fruits like kiwi and the boring strawberries deeply plum to bright red, all lined up like a toy soldiers in jars of all shapes and sizes. Big fleshy reddish Fuji apples were piled up in the shapes of mountains. Juicy Sunkist oranges where stack as if it were to collapse anytime. Bottles with corked, screw caps, chipped, were holding precious liquor. They were God’s nectar to me! I delight most in licking off their necks, the escaping lone droplet. Bars of Meiji, Godiva, Hershey’s and Lindt chocolates were resting quietly in the cupboards. Candies with glazed, sugar coated ones and those on a stick were arranged in a daggling, confusing incredible array. Cans of adorably made macadamia nut, walnut and peanuts were irresistible for anyone who were craze about snacks.
This was my kingdom, my heaven. It was my sanctuary…my escape…my solace. This was my special place where heart once broken could heal; rumbling tummies were soothed; and any fantasy could be fulfilled. The kitchen!
Ask any child or any adult with a half decent childhood if they had ever snuck into the tempting kitchen for a nibble of mother’s freshly baked mouthwatering cookies and a glass of warm milk. There were chances that they would immediately salivate at the memory of the scrumptious cookies crunching in their mouths and the chocolate mashing into a sticky sweet gooey paste. It was ok if it all gets stuck between your teeth. The pleasure was all worth it.
The kitchen was my fantasyland. It got my heart pumping violently when I heard the hurried footsteps pattering across the floor, the dangling of pots and the most beautiful of all –the orchestra of the pieces of bacons hitting a hot pan!
Oh and the smells! Familiar favorites like the spicy aroma of meat bone tea just brought back memories of my younger days when I was living above a coffeshop. Smell was a mixture of nostalgia and poignance, brewed in an herbal stew. Laze in corner of the kitchen just by the washer, I reminisce the old days was such luxury!
The coffeshop was a distant memory now. The pungent smells of the sambal belachan being fried by the machik of the nasi padang store, the sinful nuggets of fried land at the fish ball noodle store. I did love that place, but the stomping feet of the lunchtime and dinnertime crowds created such a labyrinth whenever I had to fill my stomach, I was petrified to go out.
What a lucky break then, that as I made my way out for my daily treat of dried shrimp just by the Chinese rice stall, that a pudgy man in his fifties should whisk me off in his van and brought me here!
Prince charming?
Ha! Far from that!
The deliveryman of an appliance company bad stopped his trolley right in front of my face, I had scampered onto it while trying to avoid getting my toes stepped on.
Although the journey was just a fifteen minutes drive, but the fear of being discovered made it seem like an eternity. I tucked my limber body into a dark washer box and held my anxious breath that was quickening by the seconds.
When I finally saw light again, I found myself lying on a well-maintained mansion with granite floors.
The washer’s destination that was next to the kitchen brought me to my shangri-la. An unlimited supplies of food- organic and junk, savory and sweet and an assortment of beverages, fizzy, alcoholic, sparkling and still.
What more can I ask for? A life without hardship. No need for work, no need for school. A life of wants- any want, only waiting for the occasion to be satisfied!
However, before you thought that there was no catch to this, you would have to remember the risk that I put my mortal soul through everytime I scamper out to scavenge for food.
The lady of the house, a successful lawyer in her early thirties, once screamed her lungs off when my late night supper binge coincided with hers,. She dropped her roasted beef sandwich while I left my Pringle chips. We all ran in opposite directions.
She did get a pest exterminator in the very next day, and laid a maze of the most vicious glue traps for me to “enjoy”. That’s when I lost an inch of my tail and I had to use a piece of snow white bread in order to dry my wound.
Of course, I had considered moving to a safer place, however the aroma of the warm toast and melting cheese every morning, the home made meat ball spaghetti in the afternoons and the sweet and sour fish poured over steam jasmine rice during dinner always holds me back when I was about to step out of the beautiful romantic house.
Yes, it is her kitchen, not mine, but it certainly is my kingdom... my heaven.(882 words)
