Today’s episode is guest hosted by Victoria Chang.

Transcript

I’m Victoria Chang and this is The Slowdown.

If I were to think of my childhood home, the first thing that comes to mind is the kitchen table. Then, I think about all the smells of steaming home cooked Chinese food that appeared on that table night after night. I loved eating the homemade dumplings we made together as a family. My mother had the hardest job — kneading the dough and preparing the meat and vegetable stuffing. I helped her wrap the dumplings one by one, trying to make her proud with my perfectly shaped and pinched crescent moons.

My sister was sometimes around to help, more often than not, she’d be up in her room reading quietly by herself. My father would be ready at the frying pan. He loved to get the potstickers perfectly crispy and I still remember his pride and excitement when they came out beautifully. When the first batch was ready, I was the first taste tester, often burning my tongue because I was so excited. Then we would all gather around the table and eat together.

This was also the table where my parents helped us with homework. I still remember my sister or me sitting at that table, well into the evening, getting help from my mother in math and my father in all the sciences.

As I write this, I am sitting at an old farm table, a table that we’ve had since our children were young. It has old paint on it from crafts, various nicks and dents from wild young hands. I think about the fifteen years of living that this surface has witnessed and been a part of. As I sit at the table, one of our teenagers is sitting diagonally to me, with her headphones on, working on her laptop, doing homework. As a certain part of my parenting journey is ending, I sometimes touch the table and pat it, for it has seen everything — so much heartache, so much joy, so much love.

Today’s poem is an ode to the kitchen table and all the ways that a table holds everything in our lives — all the pain of the world, its history, and all the beauty at once.

Perhaps the World Ends Here
by Joy Harjo

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.
 
The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.
 
We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.
 
It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.
 
At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.
 
Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves 
       and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.
 
This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.
 
Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.
 
We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.
 
At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.
 
Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.

“Perhaps the World Ends Here” by Joy Harjo from THE WOMAN WHO FELL FROM THE SKY © 1996 Joy Harjo. Used by permission of W.W. Norton & Company and the poet.