This place was, for me, for thirteen years, a kind of home. A food home. (I remember some afternoons looking out the window facing the parking lot, touching the white stucco wall and thinking that I could stay here, somewhat happily, forever--I remember thinking this expression in my head--"snug as a bug.") And insomuch as my memory has always been most alive, most vibrant, most feeling when it comes to food, a memory place. And it was a place where I lived, where I embodied, where I practiced daily, many of the concepts, theories, and ideas I'd go on to learn names for and read more about in graduate school: available means of persuasion, play, affect, embodiment, pedagogy, variations on a theme, re-purposing/remediation, transfer, rhetorical situation, code-shifting/meshing, composing, performance.
At some point, maybe ten years in, I recall asking the owner for permission to take some classes at the local community college. I had no other career plans or aspirations (however horrible the day-to-day could be with the owner and some co-workers, the restaurant money was terrific and many of the regular customers had come to feel like family), I recall "just wanting to know things." (For reasons I still cannot make sense of, reading Oedipus Rex and learning the periodic table of elements stand out in my mind as things I needed to do.) I'd routinely overhear customers talking about things about which I knew nothing, and I just wanted to know some things too. I wanted to be interesting. To know things. To have something for me. I wanted to speak as passionately about some things as some of my customers did. But I think part of me needed to understand that things outside the restaurant, or who I was (or could be) outside the restaurant, could be different. Other. Better. But mainly just different.
In the end, I was given permission to take some classes (but only on Tuesdays and Thursdays--the deal was that he'd build the schedule around that, but no more than that), but cautioned me to "be careful not to get to smart," or rather, "to watch how smart I think I'm becoming."
Once I became an assistant professor, I recall someone asking me how one goes from being a 13-year career waitress to a grad student and then assistant professor--as though that journey is somehow miraculous or at least anomalous. What surprises me is not that fact of this journey/translation (others have certainly left careers, gone to grad school, changed careers, etc.), but that it was a transition that I was actually able to make. Truth is, if it hadn't gotten so bad that I felt I had no other choice, I'd have stayed. I have stayed until I'd been replaced. And that's what scares me most--to think of what I'd have done after I had been replaced. At least in leaving, I felt that I'd exercised at least a little agency.
What's hard to explain to others are the reasons for staying. So, usually, I don't even try. It's easier to say nothing, to cherry-pick and share only the details of those years that give me joy or that resonate with certain aspects of my academic journey, and keeping silent about others. As a result, there are times when those 13 years feel like they have nothing to do with who I am now, who I've become. At other times, I suspect they have everything to do with who I am now, and the person I fear I haven't quite yet become.
I recall that when things were especially rough, one of the hostesses, Parvin, would try to comfort me by saying, "this will make you strong--like bull." And often times staying felt like the greatest act of resistance. . .or power. That nothing that the owner did (or, largely owning to his management style, helped to occasion) could break me or impact me. That I was proving that I strong and resilient enough to stay. To endure. To keep silent.
And the money. The money and the "job [in]security" (i.e., as long as you were feeling insecure/replaceable, your job was secure) were always reasons for staying. As I'd come to understand, having had it stated directly or routinely implied by the owner for so many years, there was nothing else, really, for someone me--for people like us--besides or beyond this job. It was something I learned (however grudgingly at times) to be grateful for. At least I had this. No matter how bad it got, it was something I could count on, something I knew.
And the customers. I wanted to stay for the customers because they were kind and generous and because I often felt like I could be my best and most diverse me when interacting with them. Some would even think to ask me what I wanted to be, to do, someday. But where school was concerned, I took care, especially, never to get too smart. Or to think I was getting too smart.
As of yesterday, I'd completed 27 interviews for a new book project that deals, in part, with people's memories and experiences with cooking and/or baking--and with food, more generally. Even during (or maybe even especially during) my waitressing years, my best dream, my life goal, was to write a book. Even back then (or maybe especially back then) writing was always a way to manage emotions, to feel more in control, a space to imagine alternatives, and a place to be my best self or at least something more like the self I wanted to be.
The book I imagined myself writing then is like, yet totally unlike, the book I'm working on now. The book I imagined myself writing then would have been comprised of stories (short stories) that had little, if anything, to do with food. The book I'm writing now will also be comprised of stories (of lived experience, taken from cookbooks) that will have so much, if not everything, to do with food.
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