The Reindeer Keeper

When you’re young and gathered with family around the table, you don’t think about the dishes used to serve the meal. Some of those dishes are pulled out from kitchen cupboards. They’re the everyday dishes. Others are taken off shelves in a china cabinet. Those are the ones used only for special occasions. They need to be washed before they’re put to use. Some are quite old. Some have been serving meals for generations. Some have offered more than food; se rving comfort in times of sorrow; joy in times of celebration. As a child, our attention is elsewhere especially on Christmas. Santa Claus and reindeer and overflowing stockings and presents under the tree take precedence over dishes. They’re just dishes. But that changes as we grow older. Those dishes start to mean something. Those dishes and bowls and platters somehow turned into traditions as we were growing up. They’ve become old friends. They’ve earned a chapter or two in our family story like the yellow bowl that held th...

The kitchen in my grandparents' farmhouse was the focal point of their home. The walls were covered in wainscoting half way up. Cupboards were white enamel. The wood stove was the centerpiece and next to it sat a rocking chair and a woodbox. When more wood was needed you'd go out a door leading to the woodshed, load up all the wood you could carry and bring it back inside. You'd keep doing this until the woodbox was full. We loved going into that woodshed. It's where Grampie used his ax to split the wood and it's where my cousins and I would sometimes put on great shows for all the adults to attend and most certainly enjoy! Near the woodstove sat an oak kitchen table with six chairs. Behind the table was a hutch full of dishes and bowls. I think the top half had glass doors so everything was in plain sight. The bottom half was drawers for linens and such. Behind the wood stove was another door. Open it and you found the back stairway. My mother and...

I can remember going to my grandmother's and eating tuna fish sandwiches. She'd cut up celery into little bits and with a dash of pepper, add the bits to the fish and mix it all together with mayonnaise-never a substitute. Then she'd open a jar of pickles and put them on the table. If she'd run out of her own slippery pickles-the best pickles in the world-she'd serve dill pickles bought at the A & P or Loblaws. To me, pickles and tuna fish were made for each other-like peanut butter and jelly-ice cream and cake. My mother made a great tuna casserole. Served piping hot with bread, the creamy mixture complete with peas and sliced hard-boiled eggs was the perfect meal on a winter's night. It was also good the next day-cold, for lunch. Still to this day my love affair with tuna fish continues most every single day either for lunch or dinner-or both! I don't know what it is about that can of flaky fish. It's not just a habit because more often than no...