The Night Kitchen

Who Does the Kitchen Belong to?

Years ago when David and I decided to become foster parents we put it up to a vote with Lucy and Edie. They were eight and nine at the time, and much like moving from NYC to Vegas, having more kids in and out of the house felt like the right thing, but also a big unknown. They voted yes because they, all of us really,  had no idea what it would actually entail. 

One of the things we did - which seems shockingly naive now - is watch The Fosters together. The Fosters is a Disney-ABC that ran for five years from 2013-2018. It was a drama about two women, a cop and a principal, who have a bio kid from a previous marriage, and bring in some foster kids to make this big, tumultuous family. It wasn’t super-realistic, but also it wasn’t super-unrealistic either. And it gave us a format to field questions from the kids about their concerns. 

I loved watching the kitchen scenes most of all. 

Every scene in the morning, the parents and kids piled into the kitchen, making eggs, pancakes, grabbing bowls for cereal, arguing, chatting, hunched over the island. From a writing stand point it was exposition and set-up central. 

But I kept thinking: “Oh, that's how it’s supposed to be in a kitchen,”

“This is how it should feel.”

Since Lucy and Edie were so young (and cooked for fun but not functionality) and David didn’t cook much back then, it was always me in the kitchen making all the food for everyone. I wanted it this way. But I also wanted my kitchen to be this haven, this place that could feel, well, busy. With other people besides me; hands everywhere, people making their own food, bodies touching bodies as bowls and items from the fridge passed hands, family business getting thrown out over the whir of the blender, an inside joke and a good hard teasing when something gets overcooked and burnt. 

I held onto this fantasy for a long time. 

And then, I let it go. 

I was the cook. I made the food. The kitchen was mine.

+++++

My mom had this very possessive relationship with her kitchen. 

It was clean. Perfect. Rarely in disarray. There weren’t dishes piled up in the sink. Crumbs under the cabinets or dust along the top of the fridge.  Even when she made trays and trays of finely decorated Christmas cookies to give as gifts to friends,  even the mess of flour on the counter felt organized. Intended.

Order was important to her. 

Critical even. 

Did I get that from her? Was I super controlling about my kitchen?  

Did I keep my family out of it? 

I mean, when David tried to organize the bowls once, I thought we might need marriage counselling. LOL. We had to make a pact when he went to Ikea that he wouldn’t buy glasses or forks without my approval.

Who does the kitchen belong to? The cook or the eaters?

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Did you ever hear of Mickey, how he heard a racket in the night
And shouted QUIET DOWN THERE!
And fell through the dark….
Into the night kitchen

--- Maurice Sendack
from In the Night Kitchen

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I remember making eggs for Lucy and Edie, still babies, in my mother’s house. 

My father had recently died and my mother was deep in her grief. 

She was unbearable to be around. Understandably. But also this was her way in the world. She could go from empty shell to rage even on a good day. My mother and father had been inseparable for nearly 50 years, and now the worst had happened. It was hell for her, the woman who needed to control everything, couldn't control the most important thing in her life.

I made eggs and some of the yolks splattered and ran off the side of the pan and stained the stove. I hadn’t noticed. It’s so me not to notice. It had always been a bit of a thing between my mother and I that she was exacting and I failed at being exacting.

What happened next was partly grief and deep deep depression, but also the way my mother often treated me, when no one could see, with rage and shame. 

“What have you done to the kitchen?” she bellowed. 

I washed the pan, the dishes, put the flatware in the dishwasher. I made a mental note of everything while I did it because I had been here before. This kitchen was hers and I was not to fuck it up. 

What had I done? I panicked.

I was hyper-vigilant, never knowing when her anger and her disapproval would surface. I knew this feeling well. The one where I was blind-sided and would feel so abandoned by her that I would do anything to get back into her good graces. Including begging. Including promises and bargaining. Including hyperventilating myself into a panic attack. Including throwing other family members under the bus. My desire to be in her good graces drove me, drowned me, kept me small and quivering even as I moved further and further away from her, literally and figuratively.

I watched her frantically scrub the stove with a brillo pad. 

“I’m sorry mom” I said, wanting to comfort her. 

“You come here and make a mess and don’t pick up…” her voice was cutting and merciless, the rage growing until she kicked David and I out of her house. David, still learning the ways of his in-laws, had shuttled the kids outdoors so they couldn’t hear.  

“Get out! Get out! Get out of here right now,” she screamed at me. 

I packed. I was so relieved to go, so grateful she was giving me a reason to go, so glad to get in the car and shoot the hell out of the driveway, out of the town, out of upstate NY, get back on a train to the city and get the fuck out of there. 

But no, after she kicked us out, she came out to the drive way to make us come back in. I had to do her penance. I was newly married, had two small kids, and I couldn’t yet stand my ground with her, despite being well into adulthood. It would take David to intervene, to set her in her place, to speak to her with firmness and with all the boundaries, to do the thing I couldn’t do for our family.

Thank God for him.

I never cooked anything in her kitchen again. 

+++++

Lucy and her boyfriend, Carlos are in the kitchen. 

It’s 11pm and I have long put away the last of the leftovers and the little kids are in bed and everyone has eaten, snacked, gotten water, been loved on. I’m exhausted. I take an edible, wash it down with a cold can of bubble water.  I take all my old lady pills. I forget something and pop out to the kitchen and see Lucy and Carlos full-on cooking a meal. Lights on. Fire on the stove sparking. Pots simmering and boiling, drawers being open and shut. Veg being chopped. They speak to each other in cadence. He tells her he likes her finely diced vegetables. She tells him his sauce tastes “so good.”

He has worked in restaurant kitchens, so he guides her. Lucy is a good cook. She cooks for herself everyday, but there is anxiety for her, she tells me. She is learning, so I remind her that bad cooking is part of good cooking. 

He cooks for her when she is at work. She cooks lunches for him and will meet him at his car at his work and he will eat her food and talk while he has a break. They often make food together, coming up with something to cook, shopping for the food and coming home and engaging in long cooking sessions. 

Their relationship is young and tumultuous often, together, not together, but the cooking is a thread. It is always there.

Still, I had the kitchen cleaned and there was so much stuff everywhere, and the floor was insane and the sink was full of dishes and just seeing the disorder and the chaos made me itch.

I said nothing and went back into the bedroom. 

“Do you see what they are doing?” I ask David, my voice rising.

“Cooking?” he asks. 

The kitchen is a mess. I just cleaned that kitchen top to bottom and tomorrow I’ll have to do it again…”

“Ask me again,” he says. 

“What?”

“Ask me again. Your first question.”

I think back. 

“Do you see what they are doing?” I ask, tentatively. 

“Your daughter is home. She is happy. She is cooking in your kitchen,” he is gentle but definitely sending me a message.

“She is doing something you didn’t get to do in your mother’s kitchen,” and then he says, “Let this happen.”

And I do.

+++++

Having a kitchen that feels like the TV episode of my fantasies required me to shift my relationship to it. It couldn't be just my territory. If the kitchen is everyone’s then it must feel welcome to everyone. The cook has to give up territory. Has to be open to more things that can’t be controlled. The cook partly sets the pace for the house, the vibe of the party, the cadence of the home, the happiness of the family.

But it’s not perfect nor should it be; I just opened the fridge and a jar of poorly-shelved maraschino cherries fell out, red juice all over me and the floor. Not gonna lie - I wanted to scream at someone. LOL.

The cost of being open. The cost of inviting people in. More mess. More complexity. More chaos. More love. More red-stained shirts and cherry juice everywhere.

The Night Kitchen is busy here, with Lucy and Carlos. With Edie and her friends who come and stay. They are nocturnal and foraging, like bear cubs rummaging through a camper’s car.

I’m not completely at ease sharing my kitchen. I mean, I creep silently into the mess of the night kitchen sometimes. (They clean up but not to my satisfaction.) There are crumbs, counters not wiped. Floor under-swept. Dishes that never made it into the dishwasher. A bottle or two that might’ve not made it back to the fridge. A kerfuffle of rummaging and its artifacts are everywhere.

Like a sociologist, I examine the crumbs and see they leave a trail of their night, what they ate, and how they cooked it.

But I only tell David if it freaks me out. I keep it in the bedroom.

I also play a game now. Inserting myself microscopically, invisibly into the Night Kitchen.

Usually the kids make meals from scratch or Carlos will make his mom’s cooking from her taco truck. But sometimes I assist. Quietly. 

I make tubs of roasted tomatoes and garlic for them to spread on a baguette with globs of goat cheese. Or I make a chicken and vegetable curry and leave tubs along side tubs of basmati rice, so they can make a quick meal. I leave boiled potatoes and eggs from my chickens so anyone can make tortillas. Inside the fridge are containers of chopped herbs or diced spring onions. Some times I leave congee and I litter the fridge with little containers of things they can put on top, cut up and fried Chinese sausage, crispy fried shallots, pork floss. Sometimes it’s dashi, diced scallions and tofu chunks so they can assemble miso soup. I leave the oils and sauces on the butcher block, as if I forgot to put them away, so they can choose add-ins for themselves.

For Edie’s friends when they come, or Lucy’s best friend, Annie, I stash containers of poke, or I make a little sushi bake, or make-your-own sushi burritos or lasagna roll-ups, or curried vegetable sambusas, something grab and go.

No matter what they say, they will make their way into the Night Kitchen to scavenge.

And this has come to feel like joy for me.

I am eager to wake up in the morning and see what has happened in the Night Kitchen, how my kids and their people have enjoyed our kitchen in the same way I enjoy it. It’s no longer mine. It’s ours.

It’s always better this way.

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So the bakers they mixed it + beat it + baked it
Milk in the batter! Milk in the batter! 
We bake cake. 
And nothing’s the matter. 

 -- Maurice Sendack
from In the Night Kitchen

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