Just a housewife

I hide out in the last room I ever thought I would find refuge in.

Growing up I would watch my mother buzz around cutting boards, bowls of chopped up vegetables, pots and pans on the stove, stopping over each one to stir or smell the contents. Was she a busy bee or more of a mad scientist? Neither does justice to describe the way she made that space. Frenetic. Dynamic. A little terrifying. I was always in the way. Sometimes I would be asked to chop vegetables but I did it so poorly I was usually shooed out. Even learning how to make rice in the rice cooker was a delicate art—a seemingly simple task, but one that I feel I’ve never gotten quite right until really recently. But I always saw the kitchen as a foreign place and not my place.

Now, I shoo the kids out, too.