Community Kitchens by Darylynn Starr Rank

A hundred years ago (well, maybe not quite), the man who was to become my husband and I decided, rather suddenly, to get married.  (Suddenly, because it was the only way Canadian Immigration would let me leave lovely Blaine, Washington, and cross the border to enter into much lovelier Vancouver - a long,  complicated story which I won't go into here.  But, yes, it's true, I started out as a Yank from Miami Beach…)

We had to agree to marry immediately, so we had a very small ceremony with no one from my world -- diagonally across the continent, as far away as possible and still be in North America - in attendance. 

And, of course, there was a reception afterwards.  My husband's father insisted.   So we held it at his home.   My husband's mother had died when he was young, meaning that I was completely in charge. (Dennis, the new husband, was an only child, so there weren't even brothers- or sisters-in-law to help me.)  All his family lived on Vancouver Island, so they came over just for the day.

I was very young, and shy, and lost, not to mention in shock from making such a huge decision in such a hasty manner, and here I was abruptly shoved into a completely different world.  (Did I mention it was another country and as far away from my home as it could get and still be in North America? Or that I had no idea how to put on a reception??) 

But the people came, my new aunts- and uncles-in-law, my cousins-in-law, families from the neighbourhood, friends from his school.  All the people from his  world.  But all strangers in mine.

And me.

So what did I do?  My solution was to spend pretty much the entire evening in the kitchen preparing food.  I mixed and blended, stirred and boiled, baked and roasted, served onto plates, placed onto trays, and sent dish after dish out into the various realms of my new home to feed all of our guests.

Then the most interesting thing happened.

One by one, the guests, my new family, new friends, new neighbours, drifted into the kitchen to help.  They, too, stirred and boiled, baked and roasted, served onto plates, placed onto trays, and sent dish after dish out into the all the various realms of my new home to feed all of the other guests.

And we talked.  We talked about what we were cooking, what we were serving and sending out.  About where I should shop for food in the future.  Where the best produce was and the best cheese, and the best fish market in town. We talked about where I could buy some winter clothes.  Where the closest library was.

We chatted about what we did for entertainment. They told me what was going on in town.  The theaters, the movies, the concerts.  Then we talked about various college programs and where I could apply for work.

And of course, we talked about each other.  Who had grown up where.  How they knew my new husband.  What he'd been like when he was young ("wonderful", he informs me). 

That night in the kitchen, with the steam from the soup and the heat from the oven swirling around me, I got to know a great deal about my new family and friends, and about this amazing world that sits by the Pacific Ocean.  Imagine that!  The Pacific Ocean, so new to me.  I can still remember the smell of cinnamon filling the air as I bonded with my new youngest cousin, the taste test of  the tomato puree as I connected with my husband's best college friend.  

Cooking is a process, not just an activity.  It's far more complex than it first appears, and requires far more knowledge than you might think.  Not just about recipes and ingredients, but about family and friends, about history, and the community.  About helpfulness and cooperation and organization. To this day I know my new connections would never have happened so naturally if I'd been 'circulating' through the living room, meeting all the new people, making small talk, trying to make a good impression.  There's something primal and natural, deeply powerful, about our interactions with people while we're in the process of preparing food. 

Take care, all.

Darylynn Starr Rank (psychologist/writer) works part-time for Family Services of Greater Vancouver as a group facilitator. Her articles appear bi-weekly in The Record (New Westminster) and the Richmond Review.

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