Solstice 2018: Belonging

A guest post by Aimie, December 2018

Tonight, like most nights, I ready myself at the kitchen stove with my Griswold cast iron pan. This legacy has been passed down from my mother, by her own grandmother. Four generations (of women) have cooked on this pan, at differing stoves, and in various physical and mental states - from rural Missouri to rural Washington. From terrible loneliness to being treasured and adored. This pan has held the family line; stories told or ruminated over wood fired stoves during long winters and bitter marriages, and also over electric stoves in homes filled with laughing children and a family that wanted to love without judgement. The meals made with this pan are our thread of connection that have bound our family unit(s) for so many decades.

But tonight it’s just me, making something to soothe my belly after a long hard week that differs in almost every way possible from my maternal women elders, who dealt with more sorrow than I can bear to think of. Tonight in the comfort of this home, I get ready to pack up my Griswold pan and move to my next abode, just a little higher on the hill, a home that is also a 100 years old, like my Griswold. This pan is a good reminder; its about holding strength amidst challenge, finding grace when overwhelm wants to take over and always somewhere, right at the rim, it can catch the laughter that circles above the burner and fills the kitchen or if we’re lucky the whole room, maybe even the whole house, while we cook and make meals to fill the bellies of our beloveds.

Tonight I give thanks for this simple object that has accompanied our generations for so long, and also for the new home that will carry this tradition on; of gathering, feeding, loving and nourishing those around us. Our lives are so different than those that came before, and I am left humbled by our desire to find healing and wholeness from their legacy. On these dark nights of winter, when our warm meal sits at the center of the table it truly feels like a blessing for its abundance and the ease for which it came but its also something more familiar than that, its a deeper knowing, its about belonging. Belonging to the family line, to ourselves, to the great night of winter and to the hearth that keeps us warm.

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The author: Aimie was raised in the Skagit Valley and has always had a love of nature and the cycle of seasons. Her passion to be in that changing landscape evolved into exploring the evolution of the human spirit over time, place, and circumstance. She currently documents the lives of peoples through short films on topics ranging from living with grace during chronic illness to surviving the trials of being a refugee in America. She considers herself the lucky mother of two boys and the wife of an Eagle Scout, ensuring that at least someone is prepared at all times.

Photo: The Griswold, December 2018.