My Corner

 I don’t know if this holds true for other people, but for me there is a childhood time and a place that I can look back to when I was perfectly happy. My parents’ kitchen had a ‘banquette’, as they were called. A corner with padded benches on two sides of a table and a chair on the third side. My mother’s younger sister, who taught ‘Enrichment’ (Music, Art, etc.) at several schools, would drop in frequently after classes were over to have a coffee and chat with my mother. They were close and had similar amazing, blazing intelligence and similar whacky senses of humour. Listening to them was fascinating as they dissected people and things.

I sat on the banquette seat between them – I was probably eleven or twelve – reading, and listening to them. And I knew that I was perfectly loved and perfectly approved and perfectly safe. Even now, seventy years along, I can see that table, hear them talking and laughing, feel the warmth of the seat, smell the coffee percolating. The thing is, though, that they were both constant smokers, and so the corner of the kitchen would also be wreathed in tobacco smoke. So, there is my perfect place. Loved, approved and smoked, with a coffee flavour.

About the smoking. Our house smelled of tobacco smoking, in truth, as my father also smoked as did most of our relatives and visitors. When I was taken to meet my future husband’s family, the parents and daughter all smoked and so the odour was the same. Mostly, in the fifties, there was cigarette smoking everywhere.

As time and years went by and the attitudes and habits changed, my nose still told me that tobacco smoke meant home. Unfortunately, both for me and for them, my family finds the odour to mean just the opposite. They hate the smell and can detect it in very small quantities. And I have tried to accommodate. From smoking in the house, I have moved to smoking outside on a screened porch off the living room. This is a poor compromise for me in windy winter weather, and a poor compromise for them as I bring residual fumes inside on my clothing and in my lungs.

I am writing this because I had a very emotional discussion with my YD this week about my smoking. Among other things, I tried to explain to her why I do not find the smell offensive. Without, I feel, much success. So, here is another try. And, looking at what I have written, I think I should add that I adored both my mother and my aunt. My mother had Standards, and I had to meet them, but when I did, and as long as I did, she showed both love and pride in me. And my aunt simply loved me, took me on fascinating expeditions to museums and theatre, thought everything I did was perfectly wonderful and not only loved me but laughed with me. They were, for me, the two best people in the world.

My life has given me a lot. I have been married for over sixty years to a man whom I implicitly trust. I have two successful children who seem to love us and visit and help out. I have no monetary problems, my country is at peace and my neighbourhood is safe. I have good medical care available, good friends, a fine place to live. But there are always a few flies in the ointment, eh? And when there are, what I want above anything, is my corner of the banquette, my coffee, my book and my cigarette.