If I had to capture the feeling of home, it wouldn’t be a house or a city–it would be the kitchen, the laughter of women, and the sharp rhythms of food being cut by a ‘daow.’ When my mother and I first immigrated to America to be with my father, I didn’t realize I had left my home for a long time. At six years old, my life was defined by the women around me. My mother would wake me up, help me wash, and plait my hair before joining my aunts and the househelp in the kitchen. They sat on small stools, chatting as they sliced vegetables and fish with their daows. After school, I’d rush home to the smell of meals waiting for us all. 
In America, my mother followed the same routines, but when I talked about them at school, my peers looked confused. I grew embarrassed, especially about the dawo. I begged my mother to use knives and cutting boards, but she always refused. She told me, the daow was her way of keeping a piece of her old home in her new one. 
Back then, I only saw it as strange, but now I see it as love. What once frustrated me has become something I long for. The daow reminds me that even far away, pieces of my first home never left me, and the memories I carry continue to shape who I am.

– KR

Relationship:  Im/migrant Im/migrant