Kitchen Table as a Balm of Care by Jasmine Cooray
Guest essay from Writing with the Seasons - August 2024
Welcome to Writing with the Seasons, a collection of writing prompts, ideas and inspiration that follow the rhythms of the natural world as the year unfolds.
This month, we’re sharing guest essays on the theme of recipes to celebrate the Write & Shine Summer Festival—our feast of creativity, with delicious, virtual writing workshops on food, memory and taste.
Today’s piece is by poet Jasmine Cooray, author of the stunning collection ‘Inheritance’.
So much of what food symbolises for me is care.
The most meaningful meals of my life were those made with love during difficult times. When I think about the years since my late partner died, many of the healing moments, especially in the early days, involved sitting and eating with others, implicitly welcome to be in whatever state I happened to be in.
The kitchen tables of other people were, for me, a hearth of compassion, patience and courage. I felt nomadic, handed from heart to heart, resting awhile with each one.
The experience of being cooked for, even simply, was so enveloping, helped me feel the love that remained around me, and was also much appreciated in the context of how exhausting grief can be—robbing one of capacity to do basic things much of the time.
I can also track the ‘recovery’ through how well I could manage being in social situations like dinners, especially with other couples present, as it can be really painful to be around love after loss.
But one learns to adapt slowly over time, like a recipe evolving with the generations. You find ways to work with, to accept, your changing circumstance - this is what creates resilience, and preserves an open heart.
This poem is intended as a sequence of scenes centred around food, nurture, and recovery.
A Storyboard for Grief
a woman stirs chicken soup in a house thick with shock
you curl into a blanket, surrounded by tissuesa woman watches egg white turn opaque in a frying pan
you stare into space, cupping a mug of teaa woman spoons sour cream onto a baked potato
you talk and talk and cry and talk some morea couple ladle gravy onto toad in the hole
you fall asleep on their sofa, lulled by the firea friends hand reaches for yours across a restaurant table
you let yourself have its romancea friend enters the garden with a chocolate cake
the birthday singing wraps your heart in silka couple at a dinner party tell their love story
you manage to resist smashing a platea waitress brings you the pizza you used to share with him.
With a glass of red, you toast him farewell.
Jasmine Cooray is a poet, psychotherapist and facilitator who has worked with Arvon, the Barbican and Southbank Centre. She was a WOW Festival speaker and BBC Performing Arts Fellow. Jasmine’s book ‘Inheritance’ was shortlisted for the 2024 Forward Prize for Best First Collection and a Poetry Book Society Recommendation.
This essay is brought to you by Write & Shine, a programme of morning writing workshops. Summer Festival artwork is by Alice Ferns.