My new apartment has two living rooms to match its two bedrooms. A “drawing room” and a “den,” my roommate and I joke. Two girls used to tiny shared spaces, we send each other emails and text messages from across the house, then hear each other giggling upon receipt.
Before our housewarming party last month, we did our best to fill these living rooms with as much seating as possible. One futon and three armchairs, a couch, a bench, four chairs un-armed—all salvaged from roadside junk heaps and thrift stores. “Seventeen,” we proudly counted, before any of our guests arrived, “we have seventeen places for people to sit. Not counting the fireplace hearth, or laps or floors or the picnic table outside.”
But when our friends arrived everyone insisted, instinctively, on congregating in the kitchen, a narrow railroad space that connects these other rooms of ample seating.
It happens every time we have people over. We all end up standing, shouting against the sloping ceiling and horrible acoustics (sorry neighbors), squeezing past bodies pressed up against the refrigerator (excuse me, I’m trying to reach my beer), drawer pulls digging into the backs of our legs, leaning over the too-low counter tops, smiling.
We humans are drawn to kitchens. There’s no way of getting around this, whether “kitchen” means a fire pit or a spread of stainless steel. We want to be where the food is, where the warmth is, where the stories are being told. Continue reading
