Many folks have accurately concluded that the attributes that make a house a home usually run along the lines of having a loved one there with you to offer love, support, and guidance. Maybe, for many, it is also the daily foot patter and the giggles and squabbles of children. Often it is having the whole family together in the same house, enjoying a home-cooked meal. But what about us single folks? The living spaces we return to every day are not of hugs and shared laughter, but of furniture and appliances, the only things we spend time or interact with. Maybe a pet, if we're lucky and/or desperate.
For much of my adult life, my memories of home have been just that: memories. The four members of my family—including myself—have been geographically disparate for decades, since I was a teenager. We find time, when we can, to get together for family functions, mostly weddings and funerals. And those events always finish with a reception, and always with lots of food.
Not catered food; my extended biological families are for the most part, not of that social ideology, or income, for that matter. Which means they've cooked their whole lives. They've cooked for themselves, their own families, and other families, again, their whole lives. Which means that I grew up in and among families that did a lot of cooking. And we always cooked when we were together.
So when I'm in my small Upper East Side Manhattan studio apartment—a space so small a toddler could effortlessly foot-fling a slipper from one end to the other—the one activity I can endeavor in at will to evoke a sense and feeling of "family", is cooking.
I'm not talking about a quick morning omelet or reheated soup out of a can. For it is when I stew chicken parts and vegetables "low and slow" on the stovetop in a big pot, or when I slow-bake or slow-roast a ham covered in seasonings, that those smells remind me of the love I was surrounded by while I was growing up. I am reminded of the family members who offered my guidance and advice in between helpings of pork chops and collard greens. I am reminded of the support my each of my parents gave me the first times they each let me stand side-by-side with them while we cooked together.
I am reminded of my now younger cousins—and their own kids—who I help fry whitings and porgies in cornmeal for, running around and giggling in my uncle's backyard for a family reunion. And I am reminded of the last hugs of relatives who passed before I would ever realize they had made me their last meals.
This is why I cook, and take my time doing so, regardless of how busy I am. I should make the same time to still see my family and see them more often. But when I can't (or until I do), it is cooking—the effort, the care, the smells, the memories, and the traditions—that always turns my apartment for one into a home of one.