Millennial seeking sustainable domesticity

I’ve been in a belting-SherylCrow-at-the-top- of-my-lungswhile-cooking phase. Last week my boyfriend asked if I was attempting to recreate Lilith Fair. Yes, always. I guess in some ways I was also trying to balance the scale.

See, lately I’ve found myself in the kitchen, perhaps more than ever before in my adult life. It’s never been a comfortable or natural habitat for me. I didn’t spend much time in this alien land growing up; I don’t know my way around a stove top, and admittedly not until I turned 30 did I brew my own first cup of coffee. That was intentional; thanks mom.

“A woman’s place is wherever you want it to be, and that does not have to be here,” she said to me, gesturing broadly to the domain of household duties. When my partner and I were first dating, I was heating up a pan of frozen vegetables, one of my more elaborate entrees, and he made the grave error of dawdling up behind me, placing his hand on the small of my back while asking “What’s cooking, good looking?” I summoned all of my self- control to not reflexively elbow him in the gut like a psychopath. “I am making this food because we have to consume food to survive,” I reminded him while peering down my nose, staring daggers. That was the end of that.

I am not condoning my behavior, but I know that I am not alone, especially among women in my generation who bristle at the slightest suggestion that we be relied on to carry the domestic load. When my mother was being considered for a fullride to medical school, my father was called and interviewed to give his approval that she be allowed to attend and become a doctor. That my mom was alive during a period when she was not permitted to have a bank account, or even an electricity or water bill in her own name, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, is astonishing to me. Times change, and waves of progress bring new realities for women like her, who birth people like me.

Sometimes the pendulum swings a bit further past home plate however, and my parents had their own priorities. I want to be clear that I do not believe that housework should be taught solely by mothers to their daughters regardless of my own upbringing, and that my dad shared equally in caregiving. My parents were usually working, and when they weren’t furthering their careers and passions, they were initiating sublime conversations with my brothers and me and frolicking in the great outdoors with wild abandon. Oftentimes we ate Raisin Bran for dinner or peanut butter and banana sandwiches at midnight, and I would not have had it any other way. I didn’t grow up watching Martha Stewart, but my mom and I referred to Cokie Roberts on a first name basis.

Yet here I am, a grown woman who can compose a sentence for this column but find myself perplexed knowing what to do with the rotting onion that is about to go bad in my fridge. How do I consume this round, white vegetable matter? Bust out my iPhone and ask Google, obviously.

I’ve been thinking a lot about domestic responsibilities, what has historically been defined as “women’s work,” and its connection to sustainability. Sure, I can take out the recycling and fry an egg, but the deeper skills, knowing how to whip up items from scratch based on what is available in the cupboards, how to appropriately stock said cupboards with needed ingredients for said cooking and baking, how to grow an abundant, seasonal garden, how to turn vegetable scraps into bouillon, how to successfully compost without providing an all-you- can- eat buffet for the raccoon family that is pooping on the roof of our Westfalia, these are all areas where I am severely lacking. As someone who touts environmentalism, I feel like a bit of an imposter.

When my partner’s mom, Donna, first came to visit us, I quickly learned that she is an eco-ninja. She’s raised five children in Ohio, and her sustainability prowess puts me to boot-shaking shame. I once creepily watched her eating at a taqueria while she carefully unpeeled the foil from her burrito, flattened and folded it, tucked it in her purse, and then repurposed it the next day to wrap sandwiches for our picnic. The sandwiches had a special, delicious topping composed of leftover condiments that she had squirreled away and mixed with hot sauce.

I imagine her and my mom stuck on a deserted island for the show Survivor; my mom is sipping a glass of wine and catching a sunburn while Donna is dominating the sustainability game. In my fantasy, Donna constructs a makeshift shade structure from palm fronds with the Swiss army knife sheathed in her purse- ofmagical-powers, and she packages portable snacks in the husks of coconuts. The ocean surrounding Donna’s island will have less plastic pollution, no pesticides will wash out to sea, and the fish will be caught, grilled, picked dry, the bones buried in the soil to fertilize a lush bed of tomatoes. I love my mom, but maybe could I please get stranded with Donna?

As we spend more time in our living spaces, we are seeing a resurgence of Victory Gardens, of people growing their own sourdough starters, and fermenting the leftover cabbage they bought at Safeway. In some ways we are reverting to Depression- era tactics of “waste not want not.” Economic hardship and uncertainty forces us to not only become more frugal, but to run a tighter ship, which can redefine our relationship with the natural resources we depend on to thrive. This experience is unique in that it also intersects with decreasing physical access to convenience; people are not venturing to stores as often and are spending multiple weeks living out of their pantries. Our trash can is slow to fill as we eat all of our meals in the house and use every single item, down to the last wilted and depressed broccoli stalk in our fridge.

Never you worry, I am not about to don a floral apron anytime soon. But I am also not going back to that battleground that is the grocery store unless I absolutely must, so yes, I will choke down this totally disgusting, better-luck-next-time French onion soup.

Rachel Kippen is the executive director of O’Neill Sea Odyssey. She can be reached at rachel@ oneillseaodyssey.org.