Some folks have family trees that go back generations, others don’t know who their birth mothers are. No matter what, the human desire to know where one came from runs deep.

The Doe’s writers approach ancestry—race, lineage, language—warts and all. 

The Doe takes a look back through the generations. Our roots and how history has shaped who we are today.  Let's open our mind to truly listen!

Ancestry Stories from Verified Anonymous Writers - The Doe

Ancestry

We sat opposite each other, in a gin bar in my university city. This was the first time he’d come to visit, and he looked like a stranger, with aged eyes and greying hair. Before I’d even finished my drink, he was ordering us another, as if he couldn't stomach my presence sober. But his financial generosity was never matched in emotional availability, and after a few units, he looked across the table and told me he didn’t love me. My dad.

And then, in the very next breath, he offered me a proposition: “Come work for me.” A few years ago he’d started a recruitment company from his kitchen table, hoping for a greater life-work balance, but it ended up having the opposite effect. The offer wasn’t about me gaining office experience, but him having more time to play golf or meet the boys at the pub, while someone else did his administrative work.

I couldn’t think of anything worse, but for some reason, I told him I’d think about it.

My apprehension towards the role didn’t have to do with the job itself, but the man who would be managing me. If even Beyoncé struggled to deal with having her father as her boss, then surely it would be impossible for me. My dad wasn’t the usual, embarrassing-but-endearing dad who wore ugly flannel shirts and plaited your hair wrong. Our relationship has always been strained. There wasn't one monumental event that ruined our relationship—just a gradual, dull flame that slowly turned it to ashes. I didn’t know if adding work into the mix would cause it to snap entirely.

My mum often tells me a story that I think sums my father up. The night she went into labor, my dad refused to drive her to the hospital because he’d already made plans that night. She later discovered the nature of those plans when she found a stranger’s lipstick in the glove compartment of their car.

My dad was objectively uninterested in his family and distracted himself with every other branch of his life that didn’t involve his wife or child. Late nights at the pub meant he missed bathtime again. Another overtime shift meant he wouldn’t be coming home tonight. This intensified, until he was forgetting birthdays, and spelling my name wrong the times he actually remembered to write a card.

Eventually, my parents divorced, and my mum moved us away from the infectious nosiness of a countryside village, where everyone knows the business of your failed marriage. My father became physically distant, which gave him an excuse for his emotional unavailability.

He'd promise to come to my primary school plays and leave me scanning the crowd as I recited my lines to his empty seat. He'd make fun of my hook nose, and when I broke it, he called it an improvement. When I was struggling with my mental health, he tried to persuade me not to get therapy. When I told him about men who groped me in clubs, or ex-boyfriends who took advantage of me, he told me it must’ve been “something I’d asked for.”

He would offer me nothing but silence for months, until eventually I’d buckle and visit him, only to arrive and have him go through my bags, read my diary and micromanage every element of my weekend.

But he was performatively affectionate, which reduced my ability to criticize him. His veil of financial generosity ensured that onlookers saw nothing but a generous father spoiling his child. He’d regularly post on Facebook about how proud he was of his daughter, when he hadn’t called me in months. And now with this job offer, my dad was yet again presenting himself as the hero and me as the ungrateful villain, never satisfied with his effort.

When he’d made his proposition, I still had ten months until I finished my creative writing degree. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but the careers department told me there were options. I could intern at a magazine with glossy pages and backstage passes to London Fashion Week. Or I could be a teacher, enriching the lives of spotty teenagers with the microcosm of Of Mice and Men. Or even a children's publisher, doing PR for whatever might be the next Harry Potter.

The world was my oyster. Until it wasn’t.

As spring crept in, COVID-19 cases crept up and the U.K. went into lockdown. Yes, we were healthy and resilient graduates, but as the mass redundancies started, we also realized we’d all be jobless.

As we entered a recession, my creative degree was an ineffective shield against unemployment. I was rejected and ghosted by the few opportunities I could find. Moving back home wasn't an option, but I couldn't seem to find work either. And then I remembered my dad’s offer.

I’m aware that it’s a luxury to have a job offer in a pandemic, and I am immensely grateful for my privilege. COVID continues to push many to Universal Credit or food banks, and I would never want to undermine how truly awful that is. But accepting a job with the man responsible for two decades of emotional abuse wasn’t easy either.

We spent a week together while he trained me. We sat across the kitchen table and I would ask him a question four times before it would penetrate his eardrums and he’d give his response in the form of a cold glare. He spent a suspicious amount of time playing golf or at the pub, spending his five-figure commission while I ran his company for minimum wage.

But during that week we probably spoke more than we ever had before. I genuinely thought this might be a turning point—if he loved his business, and I was his employee, then he would have to love me.

For a while, it seemed like it might work that way. Even after my training, he’d call every other day to talk business, and he’d become involved in other strands of my life by default. We’d even go to conferences together in Manchester or Southampton. For the first time ever, he’d verbally express pride when I did my job well.

But the serotonin rush of our sudden proximity still can’t fill the father-shaped void in my family tree. The more we speak, the more I expect regular contact, which he fails to maintain. He’ll tell me he needs me at 8 a.m., so I’ll be ready at my desk at 8 sharp, but he won’t send any tasks until the afternoon. I put my days off in our shared calendar weeks in advance and yet he’ll still email me obsessively with urgent things to do. I work 12-hour days and he guilts me into working more.

He is everything he’s always been—demanding, impatient, selfish—but now on a magnified scale. The realization that nothing has, or ever will, change within our relationship is difficult, but if anything, I’m glad I took this job. It’s taught me that there is no Dad of the Year waiting for me around the corner. This is it. He’s never going to wake up, like Tom Hanks in Big, as an adult with an awareness of his actions and a desire to alter them.

Perhaps my father really doesn’t love me or perhaps he just can’t verbalize it. All I know is that working for him hasn’t fixed anything. Instead, I need to focus on accepting our relationship for the broken vase that is it, rather than trying to stuff it full of roses.

Money

I Work for My Estranged Father

No one chooses to be here. I didn’t choose my race, ethnicity, family or my circumstances. What we do choose, however, is what to make of ourselves and how we’re known in this world. What I was taught is very different from what I believe is “America.” What I grew up living is very different from what many know. 

Living in the United States my whole life, I was told all I needed to do was dream and I could achieve anything. I am a half-Arab and half-Hispanic Muslim. As a young girl growing up, some people saw my multicultural background as a privilege, but throughout my years, my perspective has changed. I was taught early in life to be loyal to my country, believing we all had the same opportunity and hearing things like, “You can be the president one day.” How could I believe otherwise? The system I was taught states this country was built on “freedom of speech” and was created because others want to live freely and practice what they believe in. What if I told you that the same people that take pride in that belief, are the same ones who decide what is considered acceptable and what is not?

I was also taught that you always speak out for the oppressed. It’s hard to know that there are people around you that would side with the oppressors. On the outside, people used to see America as a big melting pot, blossoming with different cultures, and considered it a blessing to be here. I, on the other hand, don’t see it that way. When I was younger, I took pride in being “American.” Now, it’s an embarrassment, a label I don’t associate with anymore. What I was told to believe and take pride in gives me nothing but utter shame. I saw the good, the bad and the ugly; the America I know is one many others never see.

My nightmare began when I was five years old. I grew up blessed with a mother and father who worked hard to be here and gave me and my siblings their best—from living in a safe area to going to the best schools. Most kids my age were all just trying to fit in. It was hard to believe that I went from hiding my ability to speak three languages to now solely speaking in Arabic daily. One day, I was awakened by bangs on our door and the screams of my mother begging FBI agents not to take my father away. Many people see the FBI as an organization that protects the United States, but I saw its agents as nothing but monsters who use citizen protection as a pretense. How can you enforce a law that you don’t follow?

My father was asked about his opinion by a local newspaper regarding a recent scandal at a local mosque. In expressing support for a ruthless dictator to be overthrown, he unknowingly turned his and his family’s world upside down. The organization that prides itself in defending its country does more terrorizing than protecting. Targeting people based on their race and religion with nothing but stereotypes as justification is despicable. The beauty I used to see in this country left in front of me that same morning. Using someone’s religion against them in a country that prides itself on its “freedom of religion” is hypocritical. That my father’s religion makes him suspected of being a terrorist sympathizer shows the bigotry that is very much alive in this country.

Growing up post-9/11 was hard on me. My father being attacked because of his religion, which is mine, too, was the most painful experience. Being dragged in a legal battle for 13 years to plead why a father shouldn’t be deported and taken away from his children is indescribable. Going to a primarily all-white school, as great as it might’ve been seen opportunity-wise, was torture. The news constantly changed the people around me, and it hurt me more than ever. Once taught to embrace religion, I felt as if I was embarrassed to be Muslim. I was called a terrorist, a towelhead, Osama bin Laden’s daughter. I didn’t let it break me, and I had to keep it together. They constantly told me I didn’t belong here, as if I didn’t know that already. They destroyed our countries, and when we seek a better life, they ask us why we’re in “their country,” which their own ancestors fled to.

I began to see when people became heartless. I began to see that the place in which I grew up was not the place that I currently saw. I began to see this country for how it treated people like me.

When did we let hate flaw our judgment? I don’t belong where I was born. I don’t belong where I am from. The place where I grew up, my home, has criminalized my race and my religion. Everything that I identify as is a threat. Americans claim to uphold “land of the free” values, but I feel like I am in shackles, afraid to be judged and lose out on opportunities just for being different.

Years later, I have grown past the embarrassment and embrace what I am. No one is going to put me in a box. I was taught to embrace being an “American,” but what does that mean?

Religion

Embracing My Muslim Identity in America Is Impossible

For just $99, you can have your DNA sequenced by one of at least two companies who claim to be able to reveal or confirm critical information about you. This information could arouse suspicions of infidelity or alert you to latent health conditions. It’s all waiting for you at the click of a mouse and twist of a vial cap—the truth, allegedly. 

Your genetic history and mine have been on the market for over a decade now. TV commercials show expressive, happy faces as graphs and maps unfold to reveal their ethnic origins. For a country that harbors so much science denialism, DNA tests seem to have taken off into the mainstream and become techy add-ons to the American family tree. But for me, a multiracial Black-American woman with generation-wide gaps in my family history, no amount of marketing will make me want to exchange my spit for a chart. 

For the first 15 years of my life, I believed that the last person in my lineage to immigrate to the United States was my paternal grandfather’s father. He came on a boat from Ireland, married and died of pneumonia in the late 1920s. However, it turns out that the last to immigrate was actually on my mother’s side. 

As my aunts discovered from a comprehensive search on Ancestry.com, my maternal great-grandfather disembarked a boat from Havana in New York City around the time my paternal great-grandfather died, heading to the same Catholic heaven they both believed in. He would later abandon my great-grandmother and their three sons, who all bore Spanish names. He named my grandfather after himself, a legacy that ended abruptly. I do not know what he looked like. 

My mother’s family is a generally light-skinned bunch. My mom always hated when people asked her if she was biracial or “from the islands.” “I’m Black,” was her retort, stated decisively despite her petite stature. That pride was not shared by all of her siblings. I know this by the way they handled this ancestry situation. Suddenly, some were ready to throw American Blackness aside for Latinidad, failing to recognize that great-grandfather’s census documents listed “Negro” next to “Naturalized,” clear as day. 

“We’re not really Black,” I overheard one holiday. By the time I was 14, I was no stranger to being told I wasn’t really Black by strangers who interrogated me about what I was. They would insist that I was mistaken, that I was actually Arab or Puerto Rican. They winced at the word “Black,” as though it was a dirty secret that I should not speak of. I realized that because my explanation did not contain a country of origin, people viewed my African-American identity as a farce and a pity. But I never expected to hear this sentiment from my own family.

From the inside, we still seemed Black. We still ate the same foods and carried the same linguistic tendencies passed down from our Southern ancestors. Yet I noticed odd subtleties on some family members’ social media. “Being Latino” memes were being shared, with awkward references to “Qué Pasa, USA?” made. “I know you didn’t really watch that,” I thought. I chuckled at a mechanically translated status update in Spanish, a language I studied for ten years. I wasn’t laughing at them—I was just as excited and confused by the introduction of this new puzzle piece. I wanted to fit it in too, but not in a way that denied my—our—Blackness. 

During one of many private identity crises, I told my boyfriend that I didn’t feel accepted by anyone. At 18, I felt rejected by white and Black people alike. People readily accepted me as Latina, but it wasn’t that much of my heritage, and I knew nothing of Cuban culture. Self-righteous and annoyed, he texted, “I’ll buy you a DNA test and you can get this over with.” 

Rage boiled within me, steeped with years of jokes from friends about how I didn’t know what I was. It made me feel like an animal, a mysterious creature that needed to be identified, typified, and contained. He wanted science to intervene and uncomplicate me because to him, my non-whiteness was burdensome and my Blackness wholly intolerable. 

Science is not a white invention, but it has been used in service of white supremacist societies to “prove” that those of European descent are more human than the indigenous peoples of Africa, Asia, Australia and the Americas. Heads were measured and humans caged in exhibition halls to demonstrate the savagery of The Other. The American-born field of eugenics was founded to justify the enslavement of African people and the genocide of Native people. Nazis took notes from the United States as they plotted to codify anti-Semitism. In the DNA of modern science lies a tightly coiled streak of racism. 

I am a who, not a what, and therefore a DNA test cannot tell me anything useful. Answers do not reside within my blood. I do not care to see my heritage approximated with vague labels that reinforce the same stereotype as the kids who joked that I “must love watermelon” believed: that all Black people are intrinsically the same. This science birthed the idea that anyone with “one drop of Black blood” could be enslaved as well as the accompanying vocabulary of mulatto, quadroon and octoroon. This matrix of mythology gave scientific legitimacy to slavery, Jim Crow, lynching and mass incarceration. My ancestors did not survive to become data points. They survived so that I could know I am whole. 

One of my aunts purchased a DNA test several years ago. It didn’t receive much attention in the family gossip mill and I’ve never seen the results. She mentioned that the largest percentage was labeled Senegalese. This does not make me Senegalese—Senegal did not exist when my ancestors were taken. Are we Cuban, then? Sort of, yes, given that had my great-grandfather not absconded his culture could have been part of our lives. Our African lineage was scattered across the Atlantic world by force. The way we choose to make sense of it is deeply human, individual and unscientific. It is rooted in choice. 

This year, I spent $40 on virtual conga lessons, $50 on used books about history and I watched Roots (on Hulu, to which I already subscribe). I cried generously. For less than $99, I feel closer to knowing my ancestors than before. I grow closer to them every time I read, sing or dance through our collective history and add my own contributions. I am not seeking proof, for there is no one to who I need to prove myself. Instead, I am opening my heart to my ancestors. I trust them to tell me the truth.

Why I Won't Take an Ancestry DNA Test

"Nearly all Americans have ancestors who braved the oceans—liberty-loving risk takers in search of an ideal—the largest voluntary migrations in recorded history…Immigration is not just a link to America’s past; it’s also a bridge to America’s future.” – President George H.W. Bush

As I sit here with my COVID-19 mask collection, I am thinking about my dad’s parents. They are long gone now, but they shared critical stories about their past lives in Eastern Europe. After the horror and suffering they faced in the infamous “pogroms” in Russia and Ukraine in the early 1900s, it was no wonder they were so happy, relieved and proud to arrive in the U.S. to become citizens. A Google search informs us that a pogrom was “an organized massacre of a particular ethnic group, in particular that of Jewish people in Russia or Eastern Europe.” My grandmother had nightmares about these organized attacks for her entire adult life. Hiding in a haystack as a teenage girl so as not to be raped or have a hand chopped off is not something anyone born today in the U.S. can identify with.   

My grandfather had scars up and down his body, sides and forehead from the Cossacks, who used the blades of their swords to slice him up. His four-foot, 11-inch sister dragged him home and saved his life. Another time, he was visiting a nearby town to get supplies and was advised not to return home that day. He slept that night in a shed with cattle. The next day, when he arrived at his home on the Ukraine-Russian border, he found a few dozen dead folks from his village, including their rabbi. He and a few others dug graves and said their prayers.

So, it shouldn’t be a surprise that they eventually left their homes, and somehow, around 1918, were fortunate to be included with a large group of refugees on a voyage across the Atlantic riding in third class to Ellis Island. Thankful to arrive in America, they had no food stamps, no welfare checks, just Brooklyn and Lower East Side tenement walkup railroad apartments with no air conditioning and no refrigerators. Every man for himself to find a job and stay alive. They worked their asses off for the next generation. My grandfather became a baker on the night shift—he worked for the union for almost 50 years, and with his small income as a baker, he could afford to send my dad to medical school in Europe.

When my dad was growing up in the 1940s and 1950s in the Northeast, there weren’t any pogroms, but there was still racism by so-called "original whites” against the newer immigrants. These newer white immigrants—Italians, Jews, Irish—were also excluded, along with Black, Chinese and Hispanic people. These “lesser” whites could not buy a home in “originally white” neighborhoods, had no access to loans, were excluded from clubs and life was confined to the parameters of their own neighborhoods.

In my dad’s Class of 1948 high school yearbook, there were photos of all races and religions at that time. They shared the same classrooms and teachers—a living example of Martin Luther King Jr’s "I Have a Dream" speech many years later. Yet when school ended, they all headed to their ethnically-separated neighborhoods. For the most part, their social lives rarely overlapped, although my dad did have a few friends from various ethnic backgrounds. 

Twenty-five years later, I was growing up in a nice suburb of Manhattan with a fine public school. The racism I experienced—occasional name-calling from a select group of bullies or perhaps getting punched while walking to school—was so very mild compared to what my grandparents faced. I knew what my grandparents had endured so I brushed it off. In seventh grade, at the advice of my grandfather, who heard my story about being bullied, I carried a baseball bat with me to school. The bat moved with me from class to class. I took a few swings in the air to send the bullies a signal when I spotted them down the hall. Surprise, surprise—I was called to the principal's office and questioned. I told them my situation, and they said, “Okay, just, please don’t bring it tomorrow!” Those bullies never bothered me again.

I recall finding the original 1950s deed for our home from the previous seller. It included a covenant barring the sale or rental of the house to non-whites and people of Jewish descent. (A U.S. Supreme Court ruling held such covenants unenforceable in 1948.) Despite the clause, my parents purchased the house, and over the years our village became more ethnically diverse. There are now many places in the U.S. where the minority population now has a majority. The phenomenon of an ethnically-clustered community is not necessarily a reaction to racism or intolerance. Instead, it’s a natural desire to live with like-minded people that share a common language, culture and tradition. Birds of a feather flock together.

Although many of these ethnic communities remain, Queens, New York, continues to break this pattern. In 2018, the borough’s 2.29 million population held the world record for the most diverse human population on the planet, representing more than 138 nationalities and languages. All these unique individuals live together in peace 99.99 percent of the time. As you explore the streets you notice that every few blocks, the languages on the storefronts change along with the variety of produce and foods. Unlike the 1900s to 1980s, it’s normal to witness biracial couples walking hand in hand in the streets—a real example of America as a “melting pot.” It’s a place where people are valued by the “content of their character,” unjudged because of the color of their skin.

As a child, I grew to love Martin Luther King Jr.’s speeches, and by the age of six, I had entire portions memorized. Perhaps these speeches informed my decision to become an immigration attorney. Or perhaps it was my Swiss grandfather who unknowingly piqued my interest. I was 13 years young when I visited Geneva, Switzerland, to spend time with family. One afternoon, my grandfather (who had fled the pogroms in Poland) explained he had once sponsored refugees for “visas'' to be temporarily housed in refugee camps in Switzerland—they were Jews from Poland who escaped Hitler and the death camps. I asked him about visas, and today they’re how I make a living. It is sometimes funny how synchronicity works. Years later, I told my Swiss grandfather about a man from Geneva living in my Manhattan building. I told him the name and seconds later replied. “I sponsored his grandfather.”

For the past 25 years, I have assisted many people from all over the world to achieve their own "American Dream.” Despite the hate-filled narrative— propagated by the news outlets, social media and colleges—that half of Americans are racist and sexist, the truth is, most people living in the United States are peaceful and open-minded. They remain ready to help a neighbor in times of need. 

As we move through the present challenges in the country and around the world, we can benefit from calling upon the spirit of the immigrant, part of us that is forever open, ever ready, unwavering, willing, courageous, determined, resourceful, humble, ambitious, hardworking, expansive and brave. The call of the time is to connect to our ancestors who helped build this nation so that we, too, can build a better future for ourselves and our communities, one united in trust and respect.

What Americans Can Learn From the Immigrant Spirit

Drugs & Alcohol

Up, up and away! Time to get out of the house with The Doe.

Travel

Stories that can only be told from the land of the free, home of the brave.

American Stories

LGBTQ Voices

Motherhood

Earth Day or any day, let's celebrate our planet. 

Mother Earth

Tearjerkers

The Doe celebrates its authors this Black History Month.

Black Voices

Extra, extra, read all about it! The news-media industry has shifted dramatically over the last decade—heck, within the last two years. Between print journalism, podcasting, social media and infotainment, The Doe turns over every rock in this evolving ecosystem.

Media

Stories of starting over and finding the fresh.

New Beginnings

The ol' nine to five has changed quite a bit in the past couple of years, from working remotely to, well, not working at all. This month we take a look at how cash still does rule in our capitalist society and what the future of business and money might just look like.

The Doe's editorial team takes a look back at the year and shares its favorite narratives.

Best of 2021

“Look at how cute you were!” The text from my mother was accompanied by a photo of me at around 8 years old, when I was a flower girl at a relative’s wedding. The bride and I wore white dresses; we each held a bouquet of roses and baby’s breath. My smile was naive, milk teeth showing. I was missing one in the front. I’d seen the photo before but not for years. A rock formed in my stomach; I knew it was me, but I didn’t recognize myself as that little girl. I tapped the screen to close the text app. I wept. 

My parents divorced when I was 5. At 7, we moved in with my mother’s old flame. He drank. He’d soon turn violent, and my mother would follow suit on both counts. We didn’t know that when the photo was taken. 

I was a precocious child and a voracious reader. I knew big words but not always what they meant. I was probably also a little sassy, a combination that didn’t bode well around grown-ups who liked to drink and sometimes got violent when the empty beer cans began to pile up. My childhood had scores of fill-in-the-blank details regarding alcoholism and domestic violence. However, this story is not about those years. 

The violence and alcoholism escalated. I lashed out. In homes like mine, this often happens. Someone becomes known as the black sheep, and the family pins their issues on them. I was that sheep. My mother gave up custody when I reached 13 and turned me over to the family court system. Over the years, my placements ranged from juvenile detention to residential programs to group homes. 

The goal of the foster care system is to reunite children with their families, if possible. My social worker was kind and saw a bright something in me that she knew the system would crush. When I was 14, she helped my mother make plans to move to Arizona near our closest relatives. This was a beacon of hope, a carrot on a stick; once my mother moved away from her boyfriend, I’d be able to go home. I talked about the move with my counselors and the other kids. That summer, I had a hard time thinking about other things. Moving to Arizona was a mantra I couldn’t get out of my head. 

“You’ll go home as soon as we can get your mother on her feet,” my social worker said. I studied her dark ponytail and glasses. She was younger than my mother. She’d never lied to me. It was easy to believe what she said. 

“How soon?” I asked. “When will I get to go to a new school?” I weighed the possibility of moving right away and starting my first day of high school in Arizona rather than another placement.

“When are we moving, Mama?” I asked. I was on a day pass. On Saturdays, I was allowed out for a few hours. We went for Italian food at a strip mall restaurant every week, then we’d run her errands. I pushed spaghetti around on my plate. I’d always order water and the cheapest item on the menu so my mother could save up for the move.

“Soon. I just need to get some things in order.” 

My mother dragged a piece of bread through the sauce on her plate. It was always a similar answer: “I need more time.” “Soon.” “Be patient.” It took me a long time to realize she was only ever saying, “We’ll see.” Later, she’d drop me off at the residential center and go home to her boyfriend. 

Summer came and went. I started high school in the same center. I spent holidays there when some of the other kids got to visit home. Home was still unsafe for me with my mother’s boyfriend there. I trusted my social worker and my mother. I believed she was moving. Someone would have told me otherwise, but there were delays. I didn’t know what they were, but it was easy to convince myself that I was at fault. 

I considered the delay often, wondering what I’d done to make her mad. I needed to be better: better behaved, better grades, better daughter. I obsessed over this but never arrived at the correct answer. “Good enough” fit. I vowed to make myself good enough that she’d finally move and let me come home. 

Fast-forward through my teenage years. I bounced around from placement to placement. Moving to Arizona lost its form as language. It was as much a part of me as my hair color or the shape of my hands. My mother was moving. All I needed to do to get her there was to be good enough.

We never moved to Arizona. I believed I wasn’t good enough. I turned 18 and aged out of the system. 

Fast-forward through my 20s. I was angry but lashing out only at myself. There was nobody around to tell me certain things weren’t a good idea. There were drugs, some worse than others. I took my clothes off for money. I pierced and tattooed myself in regrettable ways. I went to jail. Twice. I was not good enough, and I was hell-bent on proving that to myself and everyone else. 

Fast-forward a bit more, because I got my shit together in an exceptional way. “Good enough” and “moving to Arizona” had been there since I was a teenager and they’d never left. It was the only way I could relate to my mother. Thus, without realizing what I was doing, I spent many years demonstrating that I was good enough. I got an education and a good corporate job. I have initials behind my last name. I married well. I spent lavishly on my mother; I had no idea how else to demonstrate “good enough.” 

I had anxiety. I had mood swings. I had insomnia. I had medication to dull everything to a perfectly flat line. However, regardless of my achievements, I never stopped trying to be good enough. Sometimes, anxiety paralyzed me when I’d leave my mother’s house. I didn’t know why, but I didn’t need to. I had a pill for that. 

Circle back to my cell phone, the text message, “Look at how cute you were!” and the photo of me as a flower girl. 

“That little girl had no idea,” I sobbed to my husband, referring to my photo in third person. It was an ugly cry. I was red-faced and shaking. I wiped my nose on my sleeve. He wrapped me in his arms, unsure of what to say. My tears dampened his shirt. He knew every inch of my history. “She might as well have been following a bouncy ball toward the edge of a cliff.” The child in the photo had never been hit, kicked or slapped by a grown man. She’d never let strangers pay to touch her. 

What is the opposite of a damaged human? The answer is that photo. I was shattering in my husband’s arms, remembering what I’d been through: physical violence, abandonment, longing for my mother to love me enough to move to Arizona and all the ways I laid down in the gutter in anger at myself. I pulled away from my husband. 

“Look at how cute you were,” I repeated my mother’s text message between sobs. “You did this to me,” I spat at her, sobbing, even though she was many miles away. I collapsed into my husband again. “You never moved. That little girl had no idea what was coming.”

I had a powerful moment of clarity: I’d spent decades trying to be good enough when it was no longer feasible for me to “come home.” Our entire relationship was based on what moving to Arizona meant to my teenage self. 

I haven’t spoken to my mother in a few years. You’re not supposed to say this out loud: I wish she would die. I’ll mourn, not for the loss of her as she is but for the loss of the mother I never had. I’d like to get it over with. I want to grieve for that little girl, begin to heal myself and finally move on. It won’t break me, because I’ve built a solid support system in my life. However, I know it will try. 

Love

Health

I Wish My Mother Would Die So I Can Get On With My Grieving

I work for a mining company. We mine sand. I've been there two years now, but I've been doing mechanic-type stuff for years. I live in a rural part of New Jersey. People are great out here, but if you're talking about ideologies, it's definitely more conservative.

I have a kid on the way, and I’m really excited. I can’t wait, to be honest. I’m more ready than my wife is. I’m excited about the whole experience, I guess. Honestly, it’s something I never thought I'd go through until recently.

I know that having a baby is pretty intense for the woman. So for me to be around to help my wife through that recovery period is a big deal. I need to be there to help. I think it's unfair just to have someone be like, “Alright, well, I'm going back to work.” 

My wife and I will be raising our kid pretty much by ourselves. I’ve got family around, but we’re not super close. For the most part, it’s just my wife and me, and that’s probably how it’ll stay. So it’s extra important for me to be able to be here to help out and pick up some of the slack.

But also, I just want to experience this to the fullest. This is my child—my first child—and I want to be there during this time. I'm having a daughter, and I want to be there for her. Obviously, I’ll be there for her in the dad role or whatever, but I also want to be there for every aspect. I don't want to just be like, “Yeah, I make money; you should be thankful you have running water,” and that's it. Being a good dad is pretty much the bottom line, and I think a lot of that is just being around for life as it happens and not just going out to make as much money as you can. Because it's never enough anyway, you know? 

So I’m taking the full 12 weeks of family leave that I’m entitled to through the federal Family and Medical Leave Act to be there for my wife and baby. I mean, that's what they give you. So I don't see a reason not to.

I’ve gotten a lot of pushback for my decision to take time off. It’s actually kind of crazy. It really doesn't affect anyone else at all, but they all have a lot to say about it, for whatever reason. 

At first, it was just at work. Not from my bosses, which is what I hear the most from other people. I have neighbors that say they got a lot of grief from their bosses, like, “Oh, what are we gonna do? We're gonna be shorthanded. It's really going to screw us over for you not to be here.” For me, it’s coming mostly from my co-workers, asking why I have to take all of the time I have coming, which doesn’t make any sense to me, since they have the same rights to time off.

My parents have been even worse. My mom called me out of the blue to tell me she doesn’t approve of me taking family leave. “That’s not what a man does,” she said. “You’re supposed to be out there making money.” She went on like that for 30 minutes. It got so crazy, my wife recorded some of it. 

There are a lot of people who think that the man’s role is supposed to be the breadwinner, that his responsibility is to be making money for his family, not being there to spend time with them. A lot of guys like it that way. I’ve had men be like, “Well, don’t you want to be at work?” I was talking to a co-worker and asked him if he’d taken family leave, and he was like, “No, I was back at work the next day.” I asked him what his wife did, and he said he didn’t know. I didn’t say it to him, but I was like, “You don’t care? You just went back to work?” 

These other people aren’t the ones who are having the baby. They’re not the ones going through the physical pain or doing all of the exhausting work. 

I want to be there in whatever ways my wife and our baby need me for. I know for sure I'm going to be doing all the chores. She’s going to have her hands full. I just want to make sure she has everything she needs, that she doesn’t have to worry about laundry, doesn't have to worry about dishes or stupid stuff like that. 

Plus, I want to spend time with my newborn too. I want to spend time with this new person. I've always wanted a daughter for some reason. People tell me I'd be a good girl dad. It’s not any one thing that’s exciting to me about it—it’s the whole thing. Just being there and watching somebody grow up and helping them through all this stuff and giving advice or whatever—just normal stuff.

These other people can keep trying to push their ideas on me. I'm not letting any of that change my mind. I'm still taking all my leave. I just think it's bizarre that all these people think it's so wrong to do that. They all seem to think I'm taking advantage of a system or something, when I feel like I'm doing the opposite. Family leave is a government program, and I pay my taxes. It is what it is, you know? 

I'm not going to let anything get in the way of that. There's always another job. There’s maybe not always another family, you know, but you’ve got to do what you can with that. You can disagree and do what you think is right. And that’s what I'm doing.

I’m a New Dad Taking Family Leave—and People Are Mad

I knew early on that I didn't have a normal family. Dad was a punk, while Mom—well, we're still not sure what's going on. One thing that became obvious was adults liked to lie. They would hate it when you copied their behavior and they’d start shouting about the proper way to act. 

My parents taught me a lot. Not through advice but action. They were movies brought to life, unable to disguise their thoughts that created a level of connection most children grow up missing. My parents were also open to anything, so when it came to experimenting with drugs, it made sense to ask them to join. 

I wanted to try acid. Movies like Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas had done their best to scare me off, but curiosity led me to ask. My mom is the official guide in all things illegal. A veteran of the drug wars, she would be my unofficial guide, leading the way through the dense jungles of the subconscious.

Not wanting to be left out, my dad decided to come along. He hadn't tried acid before but assured us he could take anything. As a man known for his intimidating demeanor, it'd be interesting to watch him threaten his own mind.

Mom made her calls and came back holding a plastic baggie. Inside were four sugar cubes. So it was settled. This would be our first family “trip.” 

She sat beside me, and with a smile, she took my hand, opening it like a flower. When I looked down, I saw half a sugar cube staring back. Then, I felt the nerves kick in. All I could think was, “Why's it so heavy?” A lump of lead that crumbled to the touch. I looked over at my dad, hoping to see the same fear. Instead, he turned to my mom and asked, “Is this it?”

Dad was your old-school tough guy, an aged punk who never fully committed to becoming civilized. He viewed the world like an enemy. I watched him push his half around, casting glances at my mom.

I took my half and waited. I wasn’t sure what was about to happen, but I spent the next 30 minutes glancing nervously at the clock. I didn’t feel goofy or confused. There weren’t any monsters climbing out of the carpet. Maybe it wasn’t as strong as I thought. 

I was about to say something, but Dad got there first. “Mine's a dud,” he said, chest all puffed out. Mom just smiled. “Dud, is it?” Then, Dad started going off about how he wanted his money back. “I know all about drugs,” he said. “I’m not your average man. Best to just give me another half.”

“OK,” Mom said, opening the bag. “You sure?”

Dad gave my mom the look, the same whenever he senses his masculinity called into question. He turned to look at me, and then, with a slap of his chest, snatched up a whole sugar cube and swallowed it. 

“There,” he said, sitting back in his comfy chair. “Think I'll be having words with this so-called drug-dealer.” Mom just sat there, giving my dad a big smile.

Somewhere around the hour mark, Dad started to twitch. His eyes had gone all big and black. Every now and then, he smacked his lips, like a fish gasping for air. I looked at Mum, but she was just staring right back. So I turned to Dad and asked, “You OK?”

Dad didn't like that. He jumped up out of his seat and ran straight upstairs. I wanted to go after him, but that's when I began to melt into my chair. It felt like a marshmallow made from gray corduroy. I could feel myself begin to sink. Down I went, into the darkness. It took me a minute to realize I'd merged with the furniture. I sank a little further, down into the crumbs and old coins where I found peace—part man, part Ikea. 

I looked over, out through the gap in my couch hole. There was Mom, watching me. She looked like an owl made from pastel chalk. I could hear the soothing jingle of her ice cream earrings as her head bobbed from side to side. The voice in my head told me to relax. Here I was, a couch with a human heart and Mom spraying light with a flick of her wings. “All this from one half?” I thought. And then I heard it: a scream coming from upstairs. The next thing I knew, I was being spat out of the couch and onto the floor. I turned to Mom, wondering if she’d heard anything, but she was in her own world, fading in and out, in sync to the images of the TV.

Then, I heard the scream again. Terrified, I wanted nothing more than to leave this to the professionals. But I was left wondering what kind of law could be trusted with such a delicate decision. I couldn't think straight—not surprising when you consider I'd only returned to being a full human. I'd have asked Mom, but she was on her own journey, her shape melting with each passing thought. 

I didn't want to be rude and interrupt her, so I decided to keep the law out of it. After all, this was a family affair. So I lit a cigarette and ventured upstairs, ready to confront whatever devil was waiting for me. With a series of sound effects, I crawled into the bathroom. Suddenly, I was confronted with chaos. The tiled floors shuddered and winced with each step. The walls gasped like a panicky asthmatic. I was so caught up in the moment that I forgot why I was there. 

As I stood over the toilet, I didn't want to deal with the stress of pulling my pants down. So I just sat there, guiding the walls through some breathing exercises. Then, I realized the shower was on. The glass was stained with fog, and deep inside, I saw a shape. It took me a minute to realize it was my dad. There I was, watching his shadow drift back and forth like a jellyfish. Then, from deep inside the fog, I heard a voice: “Son? Are you real?”

Before I could speak, I noticed something in the fog. It was small and forced me to squint. And then I saw them, deep inside—the moors of Scotland, and I smiled at the soft notes of a distant bagpipe. Then I blinked, and I was right back on the toilet. 

“I don't think I'm the person to ask, Dad.” 

Soon, I headed back downstairs and into the living room, only to find Dad already there. He was fully dressed and dry as a bone, sitting right in front of the TV watching Avatar. Then, he slipped his feet inside his hoodie. “Watch the skies,” he said. Within seconds, he was dipping and dodging as the movie’s hero flew on his pterodactyl. I just sat there, watching Dad squawk over and over.

Mom went over and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Tell me when it kicks in, love,” she said.

Dad didn’t respond. After all, he was fighting for the resistance. 

It was hard to keep a sense of time. Deep conversations rolled on. We opened up as a family. Then, I looked at the clock, and it had only been three minutes. Other times, my mom would point over my shoulder and laugh, but there was nothing there. “What is it?” I’d ask, looking back to notice five hours had elapsed. Next to me, Mom asked if I finally understood. I told her I didn't have a clue, and then we all started laughing. We laughed for so long, I remember asking, “Does anyone know what’s going on?” Mom and Dad exchanged a look and laughed again. 

At this point, everything had gone mythical. Avatar was finished, and now I was watching Percival battle his way through the plot of Excalibur. Weeds were rising up the walls, choking everything like the cast of Trainspotting agreed to a game of Jumanji. Mom and Dad kept laughing through the weeds and the teeny-tiny motorway on the carpet. They laughed as Percival was left to hang in the tree. 

“Does anyone know what's going on?” I asked them again. But my parents were suddenly sitting on thousand-foot-high skyscrapers. The tiny motorway beeped, so I lifted my foot to stop blocking traffic. 

It was all chaos—all my thoughts and memories filling the room. Hundreds of sounds and colors. It was intense. Then, I looked at my parents. Surely they saw the chaos, the madness. And yet there they were, still laughing. Slowly, I began to look around. I watched all the little moments happen, and I felt glad to be a part of it. And as I watched Percival fall free from the tree, I began to laugh too.

There we were, the three of us, laughing amongst the madness and chaos. For the first time, it felt good to welcome the distraction, to let go and embrace the moment. I was grateful to trip with my parents. To have that chance to strip away the expectation and roles and watch as two people tried to make sense of the world.

How My Parents Guided My First Psychedelic Trip

I don’t remember my first kiss. I remember my second kiss, the kiss I told everyone for seven years was my first kiss because I was so ashamed of my real first kiss being with a girl. Years of lying and internalized homophobia completely erased any memory of my first kiss. I can’t help but wonder what else I’ve lost because of the homophobic environment in which I was raised. 

As a lesbian living in Oklahoma, I grew up around constant homophobia. Of course, nobody—myself included—realized I was gay while I was living there. I spent 21 years thinking I was a heterosexual woman when I didn’t even like speaking to men. I know there are layers to this. Obviously, I was in denial about my sexuality—that much is a given. I still get caught up in that even though I would regularly make out with my best friend; I still thought I wasn’t gay. 

If I were gay, wouldn’t I just know? “This was just about experimenting,” I thought. Everyone does it at some point! That level of cognitive dissonance makes me wonder if perhaps part of my own denial was rooted in a subconscious desire to keep myself safe. 

It wasn’t unusual for families to kick their kids out in my hometown if they were gay. I was lucky enough to make friends in high school who showed me that everyone isn’t like that. To be clear, my family didn’t ever kick me out or threaten to do so, but they made it crystal clear that the “gay lifestyle” was not one that they accepted or thought my sister or I would be a part of. 

I remember the first time I met gay people in real life (that I knew of, anyway); my dad introduced me to a lesbian couple with whom he’d been working for over a decade. He later told me that he didn’t mind them, specifically because they “didn’t rub their sexuality in [his] face.” From an elementary age, it was beaten into my head that gay people should live their lives silently and in hiding. I’d watch TV with my family only to hear negative comments during the rare times there was any kind of queer representation. “Ugh, I don’t know why that is necessary,” or, “I just wasn’t raised to think that is OK,” or, from a grandparent I thought was more progressive, “Ew, so they let fags on TV now?” The word “gay” was rarely ever used, as if it were dirty and we’d catch it if we spent too much time even hearing queer terms.

I was two years into my college and over a thousand miles away from my hometown before I realized I might possibly be into women. Even when I came to this realization, it was only because I was surrounded by queer friends and realized that everything they said about being queer felt like they were taking thoughts I didn’t even realize were inherently queer directly out of my head. It took a pandemic and months of isolation and self-reflection (plus a not-so-subtle comment from a lesbian friend that every man I had ever found attractive looked like a woman) to realize I wasn’t into men at all—to realize I was a lesbian. 

Since then, I have become vocal about LGBTQ+ rights, as well as my own lesbian identity on social media, much to the apparent chagrin of my family. When I came out publicly, everyone on my dad’s side of the family stopped talking to me. I spent two years almost entirely outcast from my family. I wasn’t invited to holidays, family events or even my cousin’s wedding.

My family now says they’re not homophobic. In fact, they “never have been” and they’re sorry I’ve ever “felt that way.” The kid in me who never felt accepted by her parents wants to believe them, if not just so I can have the relationship I have always craved. I want to be able to ignore our past. I want to be able to have a relationship separate from opinions on sexuality, but how can I do that when so much of my identity is related to being a lesbian? 

I often look back and think about how my life would have been different if I knew I was gay growing up. Would I have had a girlfriend before college? Would I have avoided my abusive relationship for almost a year? I watch movies and TV shows about queer teens that have come out in recent years and think to myself, “This could have been me, if only I had known.” The perspective has shifted a bit—all the signs were right in front of me.

As a freshman in high school, I regularly kissed a female friend and had suspiciously close female friendships that typically ended in explosive friendship breakups. I had absolutely zero interest in men—even when I was dating them. Of course, ignorance probably played a role in my denial, but I think, for the most part, I was so scared of what could happen to me if I were gay that I couldn’t even let myself consider it. 

I want to push down my feelings toward my family. I’m torn between wanting to form a relationship with my parents for my younger self and cutting myself off from my family to protect my queer identity and my future self. Sometimes, I can succeed in repressing my feelings of resentment toward my mother, but forgiving her for 18 years of conditioning me to hate a fundamental part of who I am feels like a betrayal. It’s not just a betrayal to my younger self but a betrayal to all of the young LGBTQ+ kids in hostile home environments who may not have the opportunity or ability to fight back. 

Coming to terms with and understanding my sexuality was a process that came with a great deal of grief, self-loathing and abandonment from family and friends alike. I had to grieve the idea of myself created in the image of what people wanted me to be. I had to grieve the aspirations I had for the future, which I wasn’t attached to until I realized they no longer fit in the picture. I’m still realizing daily that things I have dreamed of for years were never my dreams to begin with. The more I discover about myself, the more I realize I hardly knew myself at all. I was a shell of who I could be, who I’m desperately trying to be now, masquerading as anything everyone else wanted me to be.

Now I’m faced with a family who says they love me for who I am, a family who wants to see me, spend time with me and have a relationship with me. I’m out, I’m loud and I am proud of who I am, but when I spend time with my family, I feel small, defenseless, exposed and uncertain. I’m constantly reminded that while they may say that they accept me for who I am, they wish I was someone else. Someone who agrees with them, who marries a nice man and settles down to pop out a few kids—definitely not a vocal lesbian with tattoos, piercings and an inclination to start arguments with just about anyone when necessary. 

Can they even love me if they have to compartmentalize my personality to do so? Can they love me if they would choose to have a different baby almost 24 years ago if it meant that baby would be straight? I want to believe that they can, but the 14-year-old queer kid who thought she was a disgusting mistake for kissing her best friend is having a much harder time accepting that. 

My gut says I should leave my family behind and rely on found family and myself. Unfortunately, my heart still has a hard time letting them go, and I find myself wanting to see the best in them and hoping that one day they will change. Why is it that after 24 years of proving to me who they are as people, I still find myself not believing them?

I Don’t Know If I Should Forgive My Homophobic Family

"I passed!” My 18-year-old daughter texted me, and suddenly, she could drive. I was relieved because she had failed the test twice and was getting increasingly cranky about it. 

I was also relieved because I have spent the last 18 years as the primary child-conveyor/transporter/sherpa. When she becomes friends with someone on the other side of the city, it is me who transports her tiny and then less tiny and then full adult-sized body to the doorsteps of the friends who also, over the years, have increased in height. If she is performing in a play in the suburbs, it is me who drives 45 minutes suburb-ward and then sits in the parking lot until the suburbs are done with her to transport her back to her rightful home with all the cats, because driving another hour-and-a-half round trip is even more unpleasant.

Squatting in a suburban parking lot (or, if you’re lucky, at a suburban Starbucks) is, as you’d imagine, a somewhat tedious way to spend the waning years of your existence. You gaze across the strip mall at the SUVs and you may ask yourself, like David Byrne, “Well, how did I get here?” You may turn to your daughter and say, “This is not my beautiful Prius!” And she’ll respond, “…” because she’s not paying attention to you. She’s on her phone.

Since David Byrne asked, I can say that I do know broadly how I got here. First, we had a child who was adorable and tiny and largely unable to get herself around on her cute, pudgy, but initially largely vestigial legs. Then, we distributed various household tasks—my wife agreed to make more money, provide health insurance and shop for pleasing apparel for the incipient human. And I agreed to get the duly clothed critter to whatever clothed-critter activities should arise over the next roughly decade and a half.

Initially, we thought this was a 16-year or so commitment. But—as you probably guessed, since my daughter is 18 and not 16—there were complications. Our city makes it difficult to get your license right at 16, but we gave it a good shot. She had driver’s ed. She had driving lessons with professionals who were not us. She had her permit. She was practicing and I hadn’t actually had a heart attack when she drove the car that close to the parked cars on my side—oh my god you’re too close pull over OH MY GOD!

Where was I? Oh, right. No heart attack, nope. Right on track to the DMV.

Then, COVID hit. The DMV closed. We spent all day, every day sitting in the house staring at the dog rather than sitting in parking lots staring at SUVs. And I like the dog better than SUVs. But still, it was a setback.

Then, as a setback to the setback, my daughter went on a trip to a friend’s cabin and said friend (perhaps on controlled substances of various sorts) tipped the canoe, leaving our daughter’s phone and her permit in the phone case at the bottom of a lake.

Said friend was sincerely sorry, and we did not reprimand them because we like them and kids, what can you do? But now we had to go to the DMV and get a permit before we could do more hair-raising driving practice and then take the driver’s test. The additional step proved too much for us for…well, a good long time. 

A good long time also being coincidentally the exact distance between our house and my daughter’s various extracurricular activities. Also between our house and the home of her significant other. How could you even find a significant other who lives that far away when you’re in high school? “What happened to dating the girl next door?” I asked her as I stared at the very large SUV looming over our Prius.

“…” she said, because she was not listening to me because she was on her phone.

It was the significant other who finally did it, though. I do occasionally have other things to do with my life (like drive my wife places, for example), whereas my daughter wants to spend her summer with her significant other literally all the time because she’s a teenager and that’s what teenagers want to do. Thus motivated, she got her permit, took some driving lessons and headed to the DMV. Then to the DMV again. And finally to the DMV and passed so she never has to go to the DMV again, thank god. She is driving now without us in the car, so we do not see her when she almost hits things, which is not ideal but maybe better than being in the car when she almost hits things, overall.

At last, for the first time since I lifted the small creature with the vestigial legs and transported her from bed to crib, I am free. She is self-propelled and needs me no more. Huzzah!

Well, sort of. I don’t relish sitting in Starbucks parking lots for hours on end. But on the other hand, when you lift the incipient human and she blinks and screws up her face and then spits up on your shoulder before settling down, you do feel like you’re serving a useful function. I may not exactly want to stare at the back of an SUV creeping toward the home of my daughter’s significant other, but when David Byrne asks, “How did I get here?” I have a ready answer. I got here because I love my kid and I want to make her happy. If I’m going to waste my remaining years, that’s not a bad way to waste them.

Driving the child has other upsides too. It’s true she has a powerful ability to ignore her chauffeur and concentrate on the latest text from that significant other instead. But the Prius is quite small and she is trapped with me in there. At home, she can emerge only briefly for food or to open the door for friends before skittering off to her basement, like one of the cats escaping but with less floof. 

But in the car, sometimes, despite herself, she’s got no choice but to interact with me. Recently, we got to talk about what an awesome drummer Chris Frantz of Talking Heads is, for example. She tells me what she’s reading (Jules Verne, most recently. “Is it good?” I asked. “Sure! It’s Jules Verne; it’s got energy!”) She bubbles about a production of Marlowe’s Faust she and the significant other and the friend who drowned the permit and some others are planning to put on. Talking to her is fun. Even better than when she used to spit up on me (though not necessarily than when she used to cuddle up afterward).

It's great when your kids become more independent and need you less because then you can heave a sigh of relief and go back to your own pursuits—like contemplating the empty hole in your life left by the fact that your kids need you less. First, she can crawl to the next room; then, she’s taking herself to the park; and finally, she’s out of her room and out the back and out of the garage and into the whole world. You wave goodbye. Then, you get ready to walk the dog. Good dog. You still need me.

When I Stopped Driving My Daughter, I Lost Purpose as a Dad

Peel the skin off the salmon. Toss in a pot of water and boil for 10 minutes. Strain and save for later. Sauté in potatoes, carrots, salt, pepper, fresh dill weed, a dash of allspice and cream. At this point, a pleasant aroma should waft throughout the kitchen and inside the pot, all the colors and textures swirling around like a tiny galaxy in a snow globe. Finally, add the salmon chunks. Boil uncovered for 10 minutes. Salt to taste.

I love to cook. Without access to much of my ancestry, my interest coincided with a desire to reconnect with my cultural background, to color in the blank faces lost to estrangement and history. This process started when trying to do research on my family origins for a personal project. Realizing what limited information I had, I started researching traditional recipes, on both sides of my family. I come from a long line of estrangement. My mother was the bastard child of a mid-level goon in the Jewish mafia. Her mother was a lifelong addict, who was similarly estranged from her mother, a schizophrenic. I am estranged from my father, a fundamentalist pastor, who is also estranged from his father. It’s not so much that history repeats itself as that it is passed down. 

But that is also not all that is passed down. I have this recipe for lohikeitto—a fish soup with subtle variations across Scandinavia. It’s simple and unpretentious, but delicious and hearty. It nourishes me like it nourished some of my ancestors long, long ago.

Cooking is an act of love—to oneself, to the loved ones you are cooking for, to the cultural history of the dish you are preparing. It’s also our oldest ritual. There’s a special, spiritual satisfaction in watching all the disparate ingredients alchemize into something wholly new. In the traditional folk religion of China, there is a separate deity of the kitchen—named Zao Jun, or “the stove god.” He is the force where all things’ food is referred to. In Norse mythology, Andhrimnir, or “the one exposed to soot,” is the chef for the gods, who butchers a magic boar every morning, and after it is consumed by the gods, the cow springs back to life. So on and so forth. This is all to say the mythic, cultural and personal components of a homemade dish fascinate me.

Studies show people experience more happiness and life satisfaction the more often they eat with others. There is something innately healing about sharing a meal with friends and family. By hosting dinner parties, I was able to bring together disparate people from my life under the shared experience of eating good food. The collective excitement in laying the dishes out in front of my guests provided a secret, special spice to the food that would otherwise be lost in solitude. This is all to say that preparing food for others is a love language in its own right.

Within the pandemic years, our ability to come together has been drastically limited. More often than not, fresh-cooked meals are deferred to Postmates and Grubhub, something that, even if the food you order is nutritious, cuts the human element from the process. You miss out on the alchemic satisfaction of creating a meal. The initial pandemic years were difficult, when even intimate gatherings were made impossible. This was a difficult period that I remediated by diving even deeper into my interest in cooking. Despite being apart from each other, I remember the distinct period when everyone was experimenting with kitchen projects—sharing TikToks for the perfect sourdough starter, exploring fermentation, making jams and so much more. Even though we were socially separated, even in our isolation, food was still communal, albeit in a novel way.

The labor and love poured into a meal is not incidental—it grounds the chef in the present moment, as well as the cultural history in the recipe. Taking old recipes and experimenting with new ingredients and technologies is part of a conversation with our origins—both collective and respective. Like lohikeitto, for example. I didn’t have allspice on deck, but I had harissa, which takes its origins in Middle Eastern cuisine. While harissa has a distinct spice, much more different than the subtleties of allspice, the experimentation bore fruit: the soup suddenly had a newfound depth to it, a slight edge that gave the dish a satisfying complexity. Maybe you don’t have fresh elderberry at hand, but that doesn’t really matter—what matters is the unique way you experiment to fill those gaps or absences. Recipes are not algorithms; their beauty comes out when you open your imagination to whatever you may or may not have at hand.

To cook requires the designation of a space wholly dedicated to the meal—the kitchen. You clear the counters, wash the dishes and set out your materials. While you begin to cook, the experience becomes circular, hypotonic and sensual—your attention is pulled away from time and into the touch, taste, smell and sound of cooking food. The beauty of food isn’t necessarily the product but the process. It’s a ritual, and like most rituals, it’s the participation that grounds each action, each ingredient, each moment into something that feels larger than simply a meal. And when you’ve finished eating, cleared the dishes and sit down to relish in the satisfaction, you often discover a quiet peace, as though you just finished doing yoga. And that’s not coincidental, because cooking is meditation. It pulls you away from the noise and chaos of your life and provides an avenue to step away and step into the recipe itself.

Whether cooking for loved ones or just myself, I try to dedicate the process to slowness, a space to relish in the little things—the tiny sensory joys and discrete pleasure of moving through the world.

Finding My Roots Through Mystical Cooking

As an Irish Traveller, I have always been told to hide who I am—to hide a part of my life that people could, and would, judge me for. From a young age, my parents told my siblings and me that friends would treat us differently if they found out about our heritage. But why?

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