Yesterday I sat on the carpeted stairs of an empty condo for lease waiting for 3 prospective applicants who never showed up. I turn all the lights on, open windows and get my game face on. While I wait I play scramble with my sister until I run out of tokens. Too cheap to buy any.
Can't quite leave yet. Have to give the applicants the benefit of the doubt. Traffic was horrible, couldn't find parking, etc. I check my phone several times. Is the ringer on? Yes. Any texts? Any calls? No.
I weigh when I should leave. As I sit on the steps on a lazy Sunday afternoon I listen to the sounds from the surrounding units coming in through the open door.
Across the way come 2 female voices speaking in a foreign language that I think is Armenian. I don't understand what they're saying but there is something so familiar about the time of day and the conversation. I remember Sunday afternoons from my childhood. My Mom served a big lunch, usually pot roast cooked to gray, green beans boiled to a pulp with seeds the size of horse pills, mashed potatoes and rice pudding for dessert. After lunch, the males of the family disappeared. To couches, to basement workshops, to bathrooms, to bedrooms. Anywhere but in the kitchen.
The women put away the food, using a recycled mayonnaise jar for the gravy and a recycled bread bag for the meat. Wiping off the table, washing the dishes by hand in the kitchen too small for our family.
I don't know what the Armenian family across the way ate for lunch but I know the men have disappeared and the women are cleaning up.
I have those memories as well. But as much as I have come to see the division of labor as a bit oppressive, I miss that camaraderie of the kitchen. I miss my aunts and gramas and I think, sadly, those things will soon be gone.
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