Hints of rutabaga

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Marjorie Turner Hollman helps authors self-publish their books. She is also a disability advocate, sharing information about Easy Walks (not too many roots or rocks, relatively level with firm footing, and something of interest along the way) in open space. Click to learn more.

The unfamiliar scent was overwhelming. I was suddenly a very young girl again and the wooden floor of my friends’ country kitchen had been transformed into polished terrazzo.

The walls shone a bright white. The furniture looked strangely familiar. Outside, the calamondin’s green leaves glistened in the bright Florida sunshine. A profusion of orchids displayed yellow and magenta blossoms.

Still immersed in a long ago memory, I stood near the kitchen doorway, but too many people crowded into the small space. No room for me. Adults bustled about, hurrying to get the meal on the table. I was shooed out of the way. “Go outside and play, we’ll call you when dinner is ready.” As I turned away, my friends’ steamy New England kitchen came back into focus.

“What are you cooking?” I asked.

“That?” my friend laughed, unaware of my sudden time travel. “Oh, it’s just rutabaga.”

“Rutabaga? I’m not sure I’ve ever had that before.” But even as I spoke, I knew this was not true. It was not the first time I’d encountered this oddly named yellow turnip.

Once at the table I inhaled deeply, held the dish filled with mashed rutabaga, and spooned a small helping onto my plate. Picky eater that I still am, a small bite was all I risked taking. Soon I asked for more. As we ate, I kept stealing glances at this strangely evocative food. What was it about this vegetable that transported me from New England back to Miami, to my grandmother’s kitchen those many years ago?

My memory of the rest of the meal is a blur. A sense usually little noticed unless the smell is offensive, this experience of scent summoning the past left me confused and unsettled.

I could hardly wait to get home and call my mother in Florida. With hardly a “hello,” I blurted, “Why did I feel like I was in Grannie Kuhl’s kitchen in Miami when I smelled rutabaga?”

My mother laughed. “Oh, she always served rutabaga at Thanksgiving. She thought your father liked it.”

“Then why haven’t I smelled it since then?” I demanded, still shaken by the experience. This grandmother, my namesake, had died when I was nine.

My mother explained, “Once Grannie died, I never made your father eat it. He really doesn’t like it, so once she was gone, I never cooked it again.”

Ah. The mystery of my out of body experience was solved. A mother who wanted to please her son, and a son who hated to hurt his mother’s feelings. A wife who knew her husband’s preferences better than his own mother had. And a grandchild, granted a too brief return to her beloved grandmother’s kitchen.

I cook rutabaga frequently now; it’s a favorite. Each time I handle a rounded yellow turnip, I pause, hoping for another brief glimpse into my grandmother’s kitchen. And yet, like a wisp of fog, no matter how I long to conjure the intimacy of that moment, it is always just beyond my grasp. The door has closed, so it appears. And so I comfort myself as I can.

A steaming bowl of mashed, yellow rutabaga cannot bring back my grandmother. However, once—just once—it came very, very close.

Marjorie