THE GOOD OVEN *Wattpad Featured* (aka 'Re Ply')

The Good Oven

Flecks of gold glinted in your hair, among the white, as you asked me, privately, what your hair looked like, not from vanity but just from curiosity. You hadn't seen it for decades. Your eyes still sparkled blue, though cloudy, and your smile hovered ever ready to break out wide and warm at the least excuse, always. I never knew you any different.

It was a long day, full Mass in a full church, with songs you chose, in your spirit:

'Morning has broken, like the first morning,'

we sang with you, after a hundred mornings. You managed to find another song, about blessing the grass, and another with a calypso rhythm, that got us all swaying with you. Sharing the joy of your century with a sure stroke, your generosity the only indication of your deepest understanding. We repaired to the hall to drink Clipper tea, the only fair trade tea we could get at that time. My lovely Anna, you found it in your nineties, and ever after, each call ended with night night, God bless, and don't forget, Clipper tea.

Why were we surprised at this political activism from a centenarian's bedroom? You saw in the end three centuries, gauging the tone of the new millennium, and drew your own conclusions. Fair trade. What you didn't know wasn't worth knowing.

A telegram from the Queen came to mark the day. Oh that was so good. You tilted it to try to get the light to pick out some shapes, and someone described it. You were beaming. Then a letter on Westminster printed paper from Tony Blair, and Cherie, with a gift. The Prime Minister. That made us pause. Strange to think there was no Labour Party when you were born, and most people didn't have a vote in England in the 1890's. I once asked you tentatively what you'd thought of the suffragettes. You glided past the subject. In the kitchens of the big house where you were working then, votes for women, or for poorer men, hadn't been an appropriate topic.

There was a grand presentation of bouquets and a speech, recorded for the television news. You answered standing, glowing, with wit and relevance, giving thanks and appreciation for everyone there, for a good life, and good friends, by the grace of God and the work of many hands.

Thanks for the love of your husband, so missed, who came every single day to pray in this church, who after work went straight outside to the allottment, to feed you, and get his breath. I remember him, always on his way out or just coming back, smiling and not sitting down. I remember you, making bread in the little side oven of the fire, with the black singing kettle on the top, while bright coals burned. A cake hid on the opposite side of the hearth, at the right temperature. You exchanged words with him as he passed, like two geese in homing flight, voicing your connectedness.

We read your recipes when we reached the age to make a Christmas cake ourselves (no-one ever made one just like yours, perfect) and I distinctly remember asking, what does it mean, for the temperature, 'a good oven'? A long distance phone call couldn't describe the smell of the metal that told you when it was time to put the cake in, or how well the coals should be burning, how often banked up. 

Meals you made were the best, felt more than cooked, like the light flip of batter and the heavier blup of buttery tin ready cake. Sometimes you boiled home grown potatoes, with a last-second added leaf of apple mint. Occasionally you used an electric kitchen cooker like ours, when there were too many of us, just to make it safer. But it felt strange at your house to cook away from the fire and us, not in our midst with conversation and cosiness.

Your hearth was a true hearth. We sat in a semi-circle, on chairs and the floor, reddening our faces without wine, killing ourselves laughing, bringing our souls to the boil.

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The family of the lady in this story came from Ireland, from the Catholic community, of whom so many died under the famine, while food was being shipped out of Ireland by mainly British landowners. Many were forced to leave, and went to heavy industry in mines and steel works, as well as building roads and homes around Britain. 

How did she live to such a great age, graced with such dignity and irrepressible hilarity?

I was full of joy to see the heartfelt celebration and the global perspicacity, that is, the grace, of another centenarian on her visit to the Whitehouse in America this week. Another continent, another life, but goodness me, the beauty of one who has watched and waited for the daybreak shone through this lady, and brought  my dear aunt back to me. With enormous thanks to the great and the quiet and the loving and the giving of these marvellous women and men I would like to include this wonderful film clip, with hope and prayer that we may be worthy:

Article 1 - All people are born free and equal in rights

Article 2 - The Purpose of all political parties is the safeguarding of the natural and inalienable Rights of Man. These Rights are liberty, property security and resistance to tyranny.

from: The Declaration of the Rights of Man  

Thomas Jefferson directly influenced the document introduced in France in 1798 by General Lafayette. For those who endured the two world wars and their descendants, ourselves, it was vitally redrafted into the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.