The Yellow Kitchen
Updated: Sep 9
Some memories seem to hold their color.
Lovetta was a vibrant woman. She never left home without bold lipstick and a jumble of bracelets on her wrist. She wore cool patterned reading glasses on a chain, which was jewelry in itself. Large dangling earrings adorned her ears when she was going somewhere special. Her hair was dark, and she kept it pinned up most of the time.
She grew up in a wealthy family, which sometimes showed, especially when she felt disrespected and confronted the perpetrator with a bold, “Do you know who I am?”
My mom would smile and laugh, knowing that was not who she was anymore. Lovetta knew that. I think she just needed to say it sometimes.
She had married, had a son, gotten divorced, and now, in her 50s, lived next door to us in a housing project—albeit a pretty nice one, but still a housing project. Winton Terrace was clean and green in the 60s, and our units were what we now call three-bedroom townhouses. Nevertheless, a woman born into wealth doesn't want to admit she lived here, even if here was pretty nice.
Lovetta was the opposite of my mom. She was a packrat.
Her kitchen was unforgettable.
The moment you walked in her back door, your eyes landed on a breakfast bar painted the brightest, happiest yellow imaginable. I would sit at the kitchen counter and let my eyes travel around the room at the delightful baubles and tchotchkes everywhere.
I never saw everything.
If my sisters or I were sick and had to stay home from school and Mom had an appointment, we would go to Lovetta’s until she returned. Being sick had perks. Lovetta’s yellow kitchen was worth it.
She would sit us up at the bar and make us soup. But the real magic came next.
Lovetta would hand me her cake tin filled with crayons.
Colors I never knew existed lived in that box—like periwinkle, copper, gold, and two-name colors: yellow-green and orange-red. These weren’t ordinary crayons. They were extraordinary.
Sitting at that yellow bar, coloring freely, I felt joy, safety, and wonder all at once. I didn’t feel sick at Lovetta’s townhouse.
The window in the yellow kitchen looked into the postage-stamp-sized backyard. As you stepped out the door, there was a small flower bed to the left of the step. In the summer, the bed was filled with multicolored four-o’clocks.
I loved to sit on her stoop in the summer among her rainbow of trumpet blooms and take in all the color. Occasionally, a little field mouse would poke its head out of the blooms, and I would give it a piece of my peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
Lovetta’s home was full of wonderful things to discover—her bracelets and patterned glasses, the bright yellow breakfast bar, that cake tin filled with extraordinary crayons, and the little garden overflowing with color.
Looking back, I can see that some of my earliest memories of being captivated by color happened there.
All these years later, I still plant four-o’clocks in my own garden. Every summer, when their little trumpet-shaped blooms begin opening in the late afternoon, I’m reminded of Lovetta, her yellow kitchen, and a little girl sitting on a stoop surrounded by color.
Some things stay with us.
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