Kitchen Table:  A History

by Jill Talbot

I thought the refrigerator was a stove.  From the pictures the landlady e-mailed of the apartment we’d be renting in Chicago, we figured out there was one room, a bathroom with a shower, a kitchen area with what was clearly a microwave on the counter, and somewhere, a couple of shelves. My eleven-year-old daughter, Indie, and I began packing the house we had rented for two years from the small university where I taught in northern New York—the house with a front porch, a kitchen with a top shelf of cabinets I couldn’t reach, a garage door opener, two stories, and a backyard extending into woods that Indie liked to disappear into with a backpack and our big dog, Blue. On weekend afternoons, I’d stand at the kitchen sink and watch the two of them from the window. Would it give too much…