me from the kitchen. I just know I was never really invited—nor did I ever really want to be. I preferred to stand just outside, to hide beneath the table, to watch, sensing there was something that set me apart. Food was the bedrock of my family, the means of expression, and the solid foundation on which all of our connection was built. But I wasn’t an Italian goddess in the kitchen, so I had to be something else.
WHEN I WAS young, I attributed most of the difference between my mother and sisters and me to body type. Both my sisters have been taller than me since adolescence, and both had round, full bodies, the bodies of women, bodies described as curvy or generous or soft. I always assumed it was the self-possession that came with an adult female body that made them boisterous, more playful and extroverted than me. They knew something about being a woman, something that made them want to curl their hair and wear makeup, something I was missing. I aligned my failures in the kitchen with a general disdain for anything I deemed too girly.
Once every few months, to indulge their taste for the spicy, my mother and sisters would have what they called “girls’ night out.” They would dress up, taking the excuse to use their curling irons, to wear heels and eyeliner, and head out on the town for a more international approach to fine dining, and to catch a romantic comedy at the theater by the mall.
I stayed home with my father, relieved to have narrowly avoided getting roped into what I thought of then as far too girly a night. We’d order a couple of pizzas, wasting none of our time in the kitchen, and he’d let me watch him watch sports on ESPN while I ate off a paper plate on the pale lavender carpet of the living room floor. Surrounded by floral furniture and light periwinkle walls dotted with collages of family photographs, and framed art class creations from us girls, I made my first little rebellions against the culture of womanhood, a culture that seemed to me based mostly on the proper applications for lip gloss, or burning the edges of your forehead on various hair-heating devices, and a far too adventurous approach to food.
Although my father and grandfather participated in our family’s communal cooking sessions, by and large, my family followed more traditional gender roles, with stay-at-home moms doing most of the food preparation and working dads earning money outside the house. But more important, to me, was that my father and I shared a pickiness in our food tastes. We both ate spaghetti and meatballs but eschewed the spicier offerings like sausages or less-Americanized choices like tiramisu and cannoli.
My father sat on the couch, opposite the television, while I sat cross-legged on the floor by the coffee table. He’d drink a Sam Adams straight from the bottle while we watched the Celtics rattle the backboards at the Garden, him leaping up with each basket made. We’d laugh as I imitated him, launching myself into the air, coming down on one knee, and pumping my elbow backwards, yelling, “Yeah, baby!”
These nights with my father were my private victories. A dividing line emerged in my brain, one I struggle even now to articulate, because the truth is, it was pretty arbitrary. All I knew at the time was that, somehow, I shared more in common with him than either of my sisters, despite the fact that they actually played on the basketball and soccer teams he coached. I must have sensed that I was missing out on something, watching my sisters from a distance as they learned to use chopsticks and hair straighteners, wrinkling my nose at the mysterious cardboard containers they brought home, bottoms spotted with grease from thick yogurt sauces, or round aluminum plates with crumpled edges full of seaweed rolls and thin strips of ginger. I decided I didn’t want to learn that way to be a woman. I know now these were little more than introvert rumblings: I preferred staying in to going out, and because my father did too, I thought that made me less of a girly girl. This was my idea, at the time, of feminism, of political identity: I began to define myself by what I chose not to do—ignoring any kind of beauty regimen, and making a statement with what I refused to eat.
MY PARENTS STILL live in that house, and have for more than twenty years. It underwent constant change while I was growing up, each of the rooms stripped to the studs and rebuilt at least once in my lifetime. But I still remember my solitary moments there, the moments that set me apart—beneath the kitchen table, silent in the crowd of a family meal, on the living room floor with a slice of pizza. I remember ice-skating with books in the living room, a hardcover under each foot allowing me to glide across the lavender carpet.
I don’t remember the moment I knew I would move far away from there.
The year I finished high school, my parents took us to Europe for nearly three weeks, and one morning, our last in London, I volunteered to run down the street from our rented flat to get breakfast from the corner market while my sisters slept in and took showers. I don’t remember what I bought. But I remember so clearly the rush I got from walking through the city, even just a few blocks, on my own. Although I’d often been to Boston, just an hour south of my hometown, I’d always been with friends or family, and the same applied anytime I had ventured outside our suburb. As far as I could recall, this was my first time alone in a city, on the cusp of eighteen and leaving for college, and I saw my life as one big possibility. I could picture a future, an adulthood, here, in a way I never could imagine in Merrimack.
I imagined mornings, wrapped in a trench coat and trendy scarf, where I’d take the subway to my job, something smart and creative, like bookstore owner or editor at a boutique publishing house. I’d know my local shop owners and buy wine and cheese for park picnics on the weekends. I’d be the kind of person who always kept fresh hydrangeas in her house. Although it was late June, the London breeze whipped my newly short hair around my ears, which were buzzing with the certainty that my future would begin in a city.
I was a quiet, clumsy girl surrounded by brassy, confident women who were comfortable in heels or in the kitchen. People who met my family for the first time assumed I was adopted. Rather than be left out, branded the too-awkward tomboy, I chose a different identity for myself. Somehow, food and domesticity became all muddled; without even realizing it, I’d conflated cooking with regressive gender roles. My father was my closest physical analog in the family, so I took my first steps in self-identity towards him, away from the rituals of our shared kitchen, away from femininity. Food became my mutiny.
Chapter Three
Meet Your Meat
BY THE TIME I turned eighteen, I was ready to go, ready for something bigger than Merrimack. Although I’d never lived anywhere else, the thought of staying in New Hampshire for college never appealed to me: I was hungry for something new, and I found that at Ithaca College.
Ithaca is a vibrant place, an idyllic campus in New York’s Finger Lakes region, four hours removed from the bustle of Manhattan, set atop a hill overlooking a swirling city of brilliant academics, hungry young entrepreneurs, and Burning Man enthusiasts. Within fifteen minutes, I could walk across campus: pristine green quads full of barefoot young men playing Hacky Sack and strumming Dave Matthews songs on their guitars. Originally founded as a music conservatory and now with a strong reputation in journalism, the college had a population that was both intelligent and engaged: theater majors alongside communications majors with minors in business or political science.
But it was the city below that I loved: the pedestrians-only Commons full of Thai restaurants, divey sports bars, and head shops; the Mexican restaurant painted turquoise and orange; Moosewood Restaurant, tucked in a basement-level spot inside a mall, its window glowing yellow onto the street outside. Walking along the Commons, I could forget the freezing sting of the Finger Lakes wind. This was a place of energy, a place I felt a young girl could come alive. Sometimes, I just drove around the city, getting lost on purpose on the winding side streets, finding my way up the other hill to
