The Archivists Journal

Today tasted like warm coffee, acquainted already to the morning air. With lots of cream. A cigarette faintly swims in the back of my mind, forbidden. An indulgence or the temptation of one consumes me like the rain glazing off the quarter windows. I am resisting the system that tells me joy is to be fought. I remember the richness of our family’s food when plain ritual dressed in a white tablecloth was the glue that held my world together.

To my mother.

I seldom recall much of anything in exquisite detail. Now that may be the self-inflicted wounds of a life spent seeking the mystique of pain, or weed, the rush of a good service, or any other such folly of youth and profession. But truthfully, the basal fear of retrospection keeps me weary of conjuring visions of my youth. Though when pressed, the kitchen at Pine Valley holds a reverence for me that rivals cathedrals and palaces alike. This kitchen existed before any incarnate knowledge of my conception and was built in a time before we began to adopt the luxury of women’s rights. This is relevant as the kitchen was in the home of a so-called “kit house” from the 50’s. Post-war, when white America entered its golden age and the surplus wealth brought on by our new found superpower status encouraged dramatic change to the status quo for minorities of all kinds (and not without more dramatics than I am willing to put to paper here of course), these house kits were sold to young families. Essentially, a blueprint, a shopping list, and some few thousand dollars were all that stood between you and a home you had built with your own hands. I think when most people describe a nostalgia for the American Dream, this is the version of that dream they mean. One that was not made for minorities and social outcasts, one that was dominated by the male experience and left precious corners of domesticity for the woman to carve out of her own sweat, blood, and tears. To say it in simpler terms, the kitchen was a tiny space, just big enough for a loving wife or mother to cook for a family of four. The counterspace limited and rather efficiently placed about 2 half-turn steps from the cooking equipment, and although small, this kitchen was always destined to be the hearth of that home. It had doors that opened into both the living/dining room, one that led out to the pantry and the rear of the house nearest the single shared restroom, and a third opening out to the back porch, just big enough for some custodial storage and conveniently placed nearest the trash bins. In practice, the woman of the house could host dinner and clean the house without ever being seen in the main room, save to flash a subordinate smile and bring out plates and cocktails. This physical language of design would go on to dominate the workflow of the house even without the attached regressive societal hangups, a constant reminder that the woman’s job was to be unseen, constantly serving her household, that it was the labor of women to keep the fires burning.

My mother, I think, would reject all of this domesticity, social pandering, and patriarchal roleplaying, yet still that became her kitchen. My mother is a writer, a good one, she has published books and has been in national magazines with audiences in the millions, she worked for her social position and threw off the shackles of tradition to chase a life that was messier, more full, with room for her to write a story that lived up to the grand visions that filled her head as a young writer, yet still this became her kitchen. She would wake up and make us our lunch, a PB&J sandwich, an applesauce with the foil peel-top lids you had to lick clean, an apple or a ziploc bag of just cut veggies, and some little sweet treat to bring hope to a long day of public schooling (the chewy granola bars were my favorite), all packed in a series of ever more serious insulated fabric lunchboxes for me and my two siblings. Breakfast on the weekdays was most often a bowl of cereal. This was my favorite. It was often just Honey-Nut Cheerios or frosted mini-wheats or honey-bunches-of-oats, you know, those cereals that are sweet enough for a kid to crave but packaged with enough promises of health and well-being to be guiltlessly thrown in a shopping cart. The selection of daily cereals was always lovingly placed on the dining room table with a gallon of 2% milk and three place settings for me and my siblings carefully set by the hands of someone loving enough to make the small sacrifices that feel like they dont matter, that feel insignificant, and are destined to be underappreciated. After school, most nights of the week was dinner, tenderly prepared from that modest kitchen and brought out in fine serving dishes, family style to be scooped and served as we all sat down to unpack the burden of time lived in the ever-changing 21st century. When Mom was home the food was always nutritious and more often than not delicious, but it was never the flavor that mattered, it was the experience, the bonding that happens inbetween words and forkfuls of mashed potatoes or baked mac & cheese, the silent joy that accompanies the resignation of a day of struggling to eek as out much goodness as was possible for our little clan and the comfort of my mothers success. She fought off the darkness, wielding a domesticity that belonged to someone else, a role she played exceptionally well, but a deviation perhaps from the future she had claimed as a small girl triumphantly playing with the boys’ chemistry set in Trinidad and Tobago. For all of this life, I must thank her and the small wordless sacrifices she made in that kitchen for us all. She carried my family on her shoulders and delivered us to providence in the truest sense. I owe her my life and my freedom, and there is precious little I can do to repay her save live a good life.

The recounting of the physical space is less important than the labor she made in that home, and the labor she made in that home is worthless without recognizing the countless days of joy she wrestled from the universe and delivered in warm bites of salvation that were greedily devoured often before she could even sit down. In a sense, we failed my mother and millions of other unsung mothers, domesticators, and matriarchs, but I hope, I pray, and I fight for the world to reclaim them. To embrace the failure of patriarchy and not allow those sacrifices to slip slowly into the dark is the battle I fight with fire, salt, and fat. Those dishes of necessity and love are the ephemeral flavors that I will never be able to capture professionally; they exist only in the liminal, only in the space between spaces where love becomes the fuel that powers a kitchen built for subjugation. I have been guilty of the sin of not noticing and of underappreciating, and to throw off those shackles has been the liberating work of my life. To see and hear those (mostly) women who fight every day and sacrifice plate after plate, meal after meal, and day after day, as offerings to a family who will rarely fully appreciate her labor is the restitution I now fight for every day. This is a revolution of care, of thoughtfulness, and of kindness that recognizes the sacrifice our caretakers make every day. One that feels the selfless giver and uplifts her and honors her through change, quiet understanding, appreciation, and revolution, one plate at a time.

That kitchen defined many things to many people and there is only my own subjectivity as reference here but one thing I can confidently say it never defined was my mother, she was always so much more than her domestic product, and the miracle of hardwork she did raising us kids and holding us all together is a triumph and sacrifice I will never be able to repay, and for that I am glad. My debt to this woman demands I offer ritual to a religion I may never know, and those little whispers of thanks, being able to bear the fruits of her labor, is all I could ever need.

Thank you, Mom.