Chapter Text
When you’ve been living in a single place for a while, you come to an understanding that everything has a purpose and a place. That doesn’t mean things can’t get messy or cluttered. Maybe you hoard too many pens ‘cause you’re afraid you won’t be able to find a pen when you need one. Maybe you have a thing for rotating out seasonal throw pillows, just to make sure visitors can tell what time of year it is. Or maybe you bought a bean bag chair for your dorm that you didn’t take proper measurements of and it ended up consuming nearly the entire common area until you could pawn it off on a fellow student down the hall. But even if it cycles itself out of your life, everything that you keep has a reason for you to hold on to it.
Yet, when you have to pack every square inch of all that everything and transport it to the largest city in America and up eight flights of stairs, you start to think “Why do I have so much shit?”
That’s what I was thinking, anyway, as I surveyed my new apartment.
The stacks of soon-to-be-unpacked moving boxes were like cacti in a barren desert—sparse, awkward, tall, and maybe a little precarious. Thankfully, the stacks I was looking at right now were only for the living room and kitchen; I had categorized all the boxes with specific tape colors, based on what area of the apartment they belonged to. I gave myself a pat on the back for granting myself and the movers an easier time. Despite thinking I had too much shit already - thanks to the constant reminder of my numbing arms and legs - there were still some major home-pieces missing.
I had just come from an on-campus apartment at Harvard, having never lived in an apartment by myself prior. So I couldn’t bring things like a couch, a place to sit and eat, a dresser, a bedframe let alone a mattress, etcetera, etcetera. Thankfully, I had the foresight to at least order a bed frame and mattress and have those here. Everything else? Not so much. Ordered, yes. Still in transit… unfortunately, yes.
The boxes that were most crucial, and most exciting to unpack,didn’t require any extra storage accommodations. Those boxes belonged to the kitchen, signified with yellow tape—my favorite color.
My earliest memories were in my Grandma Loca’s kitchen back in Texas. That little Floresville trailer always had this burning/absolutely cooked smell. Rice, or beef, or tortillas, and always cigarettes. Even though I hated the smell of cigarettes I couldn’t hate them as much as I thought I should. Because they surrounded a person, my memories with her, and a place I held so close to my heart. In a home, the kitchen is everything. A place of sustenance, creativity, community, warmth, knowledge, commotion and calm. Like a heart, a kitchen never stops beating, it can only beat faster or beat slower. The kitchen is the heart of any home, and that was a conclusion I made long before I started my social media cooking series, Table for One.
The point of Table for One was to keep things small, minimal. Not minimalist—I wasn’t doing this series with only one bowl, one spoon, one pot and so on. But it was meant to be a showcase of meals that are achievable and within one’s means without a commercial kitchen or tons of space; so while my new kitchen in this new apartment was small, she felt mighty. She had a gas stove, lots of cabinets and storage, a small window against the wall, a dishwasher (a lucky find!), an oven, a microwave, a fridge with a freezer, and all the love in my heart. All she needed now was my creative flare, my arsenal of cooking tools, and ingredients. For a normal person’s move-in, the first week was unpacking, getting settled, and starting a series of new habits and routines while reinstating old ones. Yet, for me, the “old habit” I needed to reinstate was getting the content up and running again.. That meant unboxing kitchen supplies and lots and lots of grocery shopping.
According to the microwave clock,it was already 7:48 pm.
Okay, here’s the plan: find my Bluetooth speaker, listen to some bangers while we clean, stop when I’m hungry for a meal break, and unpack the kitchen to have it lookin’ cute as shit.
I found my Bluetooth speaker quicker than I expected to (it was in the first office/bedroom box I opened), not hesitating to connect to my phone and open Spotify. I found an apt “Mexican Mom Cleaning Playlist” playlist, hit shuffle, then play, before cranking up the volume before hefting the first of many yellow-taped boxes back into my arms and out of the kitchen to make room.
I busted out the mop and Fabuloso once the counters were dusted and the floor was swept, my hips swaying to the beat of the music, my no sabo kid-ass singing in botched Spanish as I scrubbed back and forth.
My general home aesthetic was very neutral-colored but bright. So, a lot of my things were silver, white, light grey, beige, and cream. All of my pots and pans were induction compatible since I had a single-burner induction cook top at my disposal. No hot plates or items with heat coils had been allowed in the dorms, which was the rule that warranted its purchase, despite me knowing it probably still wouldn’t have been allowed either if it was discovered by any of my various RAs. Appliances that didn’t involve heating elements were fair game though—my ice cream maker, blender, and my stand mixer just to name a few—all tools in my arsenal. Not that people needed so many tools to cook, of course, but there were certainly—
I froze at the sound of a deep pounding against my living room wall, wincing, the whole room shaking with the impact of someone’s fist against the drywall. My apartment was the last room at the end of the hall, so unless someone is standing on the wall outside, it must have been from my neighbors to the left.
“Turn your damn music down!” a man shouted from the other side of the wall.
I scrambled like an egg to where I left my phone and speaker, my socks slipping against the hardwood floor from the lack of traction.. I ended up stalling for a few moments because I couldn’t decide whether or not to turn the volume down on my phone or on the speaker. I ended up turning off the speaker entirely, plunging the apartment into a near-deafening silence. Yeah, I guess it was kinda loud, I thought. I waited for a few moments, coiled like a spring, ready to leap if the pounding continued or the voice from beyond the apartment made any more demands. After what felt like an appropriate amount of time had passed I made my way to the wall. Tentatively, I knocked with my knuckles as if it were a door, rather than the bottom of my fist like my neighbor had.
“Sorry! It won’t happen again!” I called back, my voice just under a yell.
There was no direct response, but I could’ve sworn I heard him scoff and walk away with heavy footsteps.
Fine. Whatever.
Looks like the making potential friends department of moving to an entirely different city was off to a great start. No clue how I was going to make friends while being cooped up here making food content, especially since the friends I had made were busy becoming lawyers; this wasn’t like college where I could leave my front door wide open and make friends with whoever let themselves in. People were crazy, college kids less so, despite what the court of media opinion told.
College was kinda the same deal, but at the same time kinship was easy to come by since no one had any idea what they were doing and that made things relatable, easy. But here, I assumed everyone had at least some idea what they were doing, or were desperately trying to figure it out, lest they starve or end up homeless. In college, any person you passed pretty much had the same goal: graduate. Here, the only thing one could have in common with any passerby was a) being human and b) living in New York.
How Texan of me—assuming I was going to make friends in the “big city.” The biggest city, where the best idea was to keep your head down and mind your own business.
One thing at a time, Gabriella, I told myself, rooting around my purse for my earbuds.
I had unpacked and organized most of the kitchen stuff by 1 AM the next day in wordless silence, with my music in my earbuds as the only thing to drown out the questions my mind was barraging me with. By tomorrow evening or the morning the day after, I’d be ready to start a recipe. My plan was to make homemade pasta puttanesca, a simple but tasty recipe. So getting flour and eggs was a must, along with hella tomatoes.
I ended my night buzzing with excitement and full of pizza. Everything was coming together better than I had imagined it and I wanted so desperately to keep going, but I reminded myself that having my energy in the morning was going to be more important than powering through to the point of exhaustion now. There would be plenty of time for exhaustion later, literally any time at all.
I shut off the lights after double checking the front door was properly locked. The lights from the city streets outside basked the room in a gentle glow. I needed to remember to unpack and put up my curtains ASAP; I was asleeps-in-pitch-darkness kind of person. I never bothered searching the boxes for my bed sheets. I was more than content with wrapping myself in a throw-blanket burrito and promptly passing out on the naked mattress, the sound of sirens wailing far off into the distance.