Tastes Like Time in Two Parts

Part I : My Time and Labor Is the Gift, A Mantra

My significant other and I have had twelve years now of ritualized and celebratory gift exchange. Holidays, celebrations around achievements, life milestones, anniversaries, and birthdays. I love the birthdays the best, with all their joyful and memory-filled ritual. With their tiny, sweet, cake-shaped altars.

Yesterday was the SOs birthday and it had been decided that we’d host a small party in his honor. I’ve thrown a party or two and understand that no such thing exists. Those who do not plan, prep, cook, clean or host said parties measure an event’s “size” only perhaps, by the extent of the guest list. But intimacy too, is work. These folks fail to understand that the labor and care involved don’t necessarily change that much and are not really proportional to the number of people attending ( the house needs cleaning whether four people are coming for dinner or 30 for drinks as one example).

Those who take on the bulk of this domestic labor and care often also desire or feel pressured to make the feat appear effortless. I used to mistake this tragic facade for a kind of glamour but now understand much more deeply the ways this attitude supports the larger project of invisibilizing and devaluing feminized labor. And as me and my cousins used to say back in the day about things with which we were not down: Bump that.

Anyway, I did the thing. Planned the menu. Shopped at multiple venues for the ingredients. Worked backwards in time from the arrival of first guests to create a short series of ever-refined schedules. I first recorded data like when the starter had to be fed to make enough sourdough crackers for all the dips I was planning, how long the creme fraiche for the artichoke dip had to sit to set, how long the saved up feta brine needed to thaw so I could make the feta, buttermilk, and fresh herb chicken marinade, when the rum cake needed baking so its flavors had time to develop and so on.

By Friday, the rum cake was baked, the chicken was brining, and the fridge was full of all the snacks appetizers and dips one wants (I want) when drinking endless Palomas. At this point, the schedule, wild with strikethroughs, arrows, last minute recipe adjustments and recorded in quarter hour increments, mapped smooth transitions from drinks to grilling time to dinner, cake (little altars!) And even boozy chilly bears in dixie cups for the late-stayers to slurp around the bonfire.

I like doing this stuff. I would do it for free—ha! oh wait. And yet. Maybe it’s because now that I do not have a food business this kind of labor no longer feels interwoven into my day-to-day (and therefore somehow, sustainable). Maybe it’s because my current job is the kind of work that I had avoided for 50 years and I come home depleted and only able to tuck a pan of something pre-made into the oven before collapsing in front of the television to watch some Scandinavian crime show. Maybe it’s because I am working on showing up for myself first in therapy. Maybe it’s the relentless too-muchness of the world and the way ruthless people always seem to be out here doing the most. Maybe—yes, this—it’s sign of a deepening of my death doula practice and the new perspectives it is affording me on the deep and abiding value of care work. Maybe it’s a combination of these things but I am done with the expectation that care work—real-ass labor/usually performed by women/of color/the work that keeps things running and sustains all the humanness—from individual wellness to systems and institutions—be invisible and free and undervalued. I want to think about scalable, systemic interventions, for this is a systemic issue, but I am also starting with myself (per my therapist’s advice, ahem).

Saying all this to say that I made it clear to SO what was involved in throwing this “small” party and offered that the extensive labor would be my birthday present to him this year. We discussed it until I felt confident that he understood not only that this effort itself would be his actual birthday gift, but also the expansive value in and love behind the offering. This was a nice gift in other words.

Repeat:  I will show up (for myself and others) more strategically and with intention. I will set the boundaries that allow for authentic graciousness. I will take time to drink endless Palomas and save a slice of the tiny altar for myself.

All deep hospitality begins here (well, possibly not the bit about the Palomas but definitely leave it in if you find it useful).

What mantras have you been repeating lately? xx