Organizing Your Daughter’s Kitchen Is an Act of Love
As I help to launch my daughter into the world, I’m reminded of what my mother did for me
By Shirley Salemy Meyer
Earlier this summer, as I was putting away Ikea dishes in the compact kitchen of my eldest daughter’s new apartment, I had a revelation: I had become just like my mother, who organized the kitchen in nearly every apartment I’ve ever lived in. After surveying the room, she would expertly select the most logical cabinets and drawers for dishes, utensils, pots and pans, and paper towels.
In my 20s and early 30s, I moved into eleven different apartments across seven cities while advancing my career as a book editor and beat reporter. None of those places had air-conditioning, a dishwasher, or an in-unit washer and dryer—luxuries that my daughter has in her current place (and perhaps takes for granted)—but those apartments gave me a space of my own, away from a tight-knit extended family in Boston and New York. And that space was key to helping me discover my place in the world.
What does it mean to not belong? It’s not simply the fact that you speak like an outsider. Or that you don’t know what to do with the plug dangling out the front grille of the used car you just purchased. (I quickly learned about the magic of engine block heaters when frigid temperatures arrived in the northern Great Plains.) It’s the discomfort you feel deep down, the unfamiliarity and unease that you unwittingly transmit to others. In Montana, I found myself at a neighborhood garage sale; the owner followed me around, training her eyes on every item I picked up to ensure that I put it back down or paid for it. In Chicago, a man approached me when I was sitting in my car outside of a public housing complex—a brief stop when exploring the neighborhood—and politely told me to leave.
That’s what it means to not belong. But this feeling made me resilient and receptive to other people and different ways of life.
One of the first friends I made after moving to Montana revived the knitting and sewing skills my mother had taught me long ago. Another friend took me hunting for mule deer. I had never been on a hunt, let alone been in the presence of a rifle. But he let me fire the gun, twice, at a makeshift target. Chicago gave me an appreciation for the organic interiors and stained glass of the Prairie style that was so foreign to my sensibilities at the time. By the time I got to my third stop in Iowa, I had shed my shyness and found a group of friends with whom I still remain close.
My mother visited me in each of these places, where I would introduce her to my friends and coworkers and show her the distinct topography that my eyes had become accustomed to. She would always bring several packages of Syrian dried apricot paste (what a treat) and she’d fill my fridge and freezer with my favorite foods—hummus and spanakopita and chicken cordon bleu. She was at home in my kitchens, finding stock pots and skillets and wooden spoons right where she had placed them when I moved in.
My home, where I've lived for twenty-two years, now features leaded glass transom windows and oak cabinets in the kitchen. My mother organized those for me, too—and even after we replaced them with new oak cabinets, Mom's organization remained.
As my daughter starts her first full-time job after graduating college, six hundred miles away from home, she’s far from the familiarity of her hometown coffee shops and pizza parlors, far from cousins and preschool playmates who remain her friends to this day. But I hope that being in this uncharted territory will spark the curiosity to explore and investigate and find her own sense of belonging.
I can’t wait for my daughter to show me around her new neighborhood and introduce me to the people who are part of her community once she settles in. I’ll bring some baklava and leave a deep dish of chicken parmigiana in her freezer.
Shirley Salemy Meyer is an adjunct instructor at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey, and also works as a consultant in the university's Writing and Communications Center. She has worked for The Des Moines Register and The Chicago Tribune. As a freelancer, her essays have been featured in The New York Times and MUTHA Magazine, among others.