Green Beans

Today I cooked green beans – and as I was cutting them on the worktop, I thoughtlessly put a little piece in my mouth.
Raw green beans…

Suddenly I was back in the kitchen of the big, old farmhouse in Germany where I grew up. No, my Dad was not a farmer, my Dutch parents lived in the house next to the farm. But I remember that I was almost never at home. Doris, the neighbor’s daughter and I were self-declared sisters. We were 4 years old when we moved there, and I was eight when we moved away, to a village 20 miles along the road.

And that kitchen, with its dark brown wooden ceiling, the smell of sausages smoking in the big fireplace, the huge wooden table where the farmer and his family and the farm hands ate the solid homemade bread with thick slices of smoked ham, from the own pigs… That kitchen was home.

I feel the wooden table, I feel the wooden chair, I see the plate with the fine red pattern in front of me. Erika, Doris’ aunt, slices the bread, the traditional sourdough bread – which will always stay my preferred bread.

I hear “Mutti”, that’s what I called her, talk to the others. And I think of the swing, that was attached high to the ceiling in the stable, and where we swung until we almost reached the ceiling, while the cows were ruminating far below us..

And when “Mutti” was busy in the kitchen, Doris and I used to “help” her, slicing the beans in the little mill, and then nibble of the raw beans, without Mutti noticing. We were not allowed to eat raw beans, because too many raw beans cause a tummy ache. And that little piece of raw bean, coming out of the inox mill that was clamped to the table top, that is now in my mouth.

I remember the time that a little calf was born and we were allowed to watch, soooo cute but also quite dirty and wet and slimy… and the little piglets that we were playing with, although we weren’t allowed to.

The mouse we caught on the cornloft, we were really scared.. I smell the dust of the grain, I see the dust in the sunlight peering through the small round window.

………….

When we moved, the homesickness found a place in me and never went away after that. That is my “90-10″: Oftentimes that feeling gets triggered, the beauty, feeling at home, knowing to be loved and accepted. But at the same time being ripped away, the melancholic hint of not feeling home anywhere.

Like today, as I put that bean in my mouth.

I’d love to hear your comments in the comment box below!