Writing Resources from Fifteen Minutes of Fiction

In the Kitchen

Solitude suits me. I live alone, and I enjoy the quiet of it. If I ever get tired of the silence, I have good friends like Tchaikovsky, Borodin, Copeland, and others who fill my home with sounds that match my varying moods.

Don't get me wrong; I like people, and I enjoy spending time with people. But large crowds of people, whether at the mall, a concert, or a party, get to me. I can't keep up with the various conversations around me, and if I try, my head starts to spin.

So Christmas parties, unless they're small, quiet events, don't appeal to me. Like I said, solitude suits me.

But I do enjoy, midway through December every year, traveling to my brother's home in Cape Elizabeth for his Christmas Open House - a two hour event which he invites his church's parishioners to attend.

Is it noisy? Sure. And it's the worst kind of noisy: people I hardly know talking on subjects that I know even less about.

So why do I enjoy this yearly party? I would tell you it's because of the food, but if I said that you would misunderstand me. All afternoon Jonathan and Melody keep the party supplied with delicious snacks fresh out of the oven. Which means one or the other of them is always in the kitchen. They take turns cooking and visiting, visiting and cooking.

And when the noise of the crowd gets to be too much for me, I sneak upstairs to the kitchen and have some nice, quiet time visiting - alternately - with my brother and my sister-in-law. Since I don't see them very much through the year, that makes it a special and a memorable Christmas party.

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