What Mom Made

Cleveland, Ohio ​

​ On the second floor of the West End Market, there is a narrow balcony where a small group of people can sit, eat their newly acquired snacks and watch the market come to life. I take my Irish vegetable pie up on this perch and grow enamored by the richness of the activity below. “I’m not sure I know much about democracy,” the man sitting next to me chuckles at my line of questioning. His accent and thick grey mustache reveal to me that he’s from the Midwest before he has time to inform me they are visiting from Indiana. “We’re registered voters, and I served on city council for a bit,” he laughs again, “well, okay, I guess I know a little bit.” He notes what a struggle this position was for him, “I kept looking around and saying, ‘which of you voted me into? I’m gonna get you back for this,” giggling again. (This man has more dad jokes than Tim Kaine and I like it.) “We did a lot, you know, ordinances and stuff, you have your complainers of course, but it’s mostly positive.” The philosophy that guided his work was simple. He tells me, “I cared about the big stuff and the little stuff. It all mattered to me.”

I weave through the markets looking for another snack and am stopped in my tracks by the most beautiful container of port wine cheese dip I have ever seen. Good port wine cheese has a gorgeous swirl of pink running through the sharp cheddar, I am thoroughly enamored by this cheese and saddened that it only comes in sizes too large to tote around. I am salivating about this cheese just writing this post. I regret every decision that led me to not purchasing any. The woman working the register has a suburban mom haircut and a sleeveless polo on, she lives in an Irish Catholic neighborhood full of Democrats. “Some of them voted for the other guy and I have to think ‘good! You got what you wanted,” she says shaking her head. These people’s ability to talk shit in the kindest most positive tone is inspiring to me personally. They don’t often talk politics in her neighborhood, “if you know there on the other side of the fence, is it worth talking about? There’s so much more to life than politics, there’s the cookouts and the birthday parties. I don’t think that’s worth ruining.” She credits the news with a lot of the division, noting how her mom used to say any story has your side, the other side, and the truth. But between Fox, MSNBC, and CNN, “those two sides are just so far apart, it isn’t even funny.” She pauses. “You know I normally don’t talk like his, but if they’re going to shoot the President, I hope they have two bullets, one for the other guy too. God, I never say that. I’m no hitman by any means.” Staring off into the distance she ended the political talk there, we chatted about places to visit and I moved on. This woman was somehow every suburban mom I’ve ever met, kind as can be, and she postulated the notion of someone murdering the President of the United States. These, my friends, are unusual times. I sat on a bench outside the market to take notes and was joined by an older African American gentleman on break from the produce department. Holes covered his jeans and Dallas Cowboys jersey as he struggled to keep a barely lit cigarette between his fingers. I ask him what he thinks about politics; he responds half-jokingly, “I’ll make it plain and simple—if you don’t fuck ‘em, they fuck you.” But politics is too controversial to talk about, it tears to many people apart. “We need compromise, where I come from, you wash their hand and they wash yours,” he says, rubbing his hands together. “We need to come to a compromise, some sort of agreement, because you know, light and darkness can’t dwell in the same place.” Even with all these opinions on the system, he doesn’t vote, “When I turned of age, I voted once. I don’t even know who it was.” He sees little difference between the parties, so voting, in his opinion is irrelevant. “You can’t call the kettle black, if you’re in the pot,” he explains. Noting that if things are so bad in your community, there is little difference to be had. He believes more in relying on god than relying on the government, “it’s not my will, it’s not your will,” he says pointing aggressively at me, “it’s His will,” pointing to the sky. The conversation derails pretty drastically at this point, as he begins listing modern things that he believes are against gods will, including, but not limited to: robots going to mars, the cloning of animals and of course, gay people existing, “When God made this whole thing, he made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. We’re breaking God's will.” I thought we as a people had moved past the ‘Adam and Steve’ reference, but alas, I was wrong. This conversation, unsurprisingly, drives me to the nearest bar. I find a local meadery and strike up a conversation with the owner over samples of Buckwheat Blossom Orange Peel Mead and Spiced Cranberry Blossom Mead (these words notably mean nothing to me.) “I prefer to talk to people, not to their politics,” he tells me. Politics, in his opinion, all comes down to beliefs, and “beliefs are very close to the heart,” even when they’re not right. He compares politics to religion, “it’s a very personal journey.” We talk about the issues he faces with government regulations in the alcohol industry, “it all comes down to money.” There are very specific regulations that separate the mead industry from that of distilling and brewing, he believes all of that is to protect the financial interests of those already in operation. In addition to the regulations, social issues are coming up too frequently he thinks, “I don’t know how bakeries became the front lines for religious speech,” referencing the recent Supreme Court decision on the right to refuse service to gay couples, “at least he’s letting everyone know. I wouldn’t buy a cake there.” I push back a little, “okay, he’s letting us know, but what happens when everyone refuses service. What happens when there is nowhere for people to go? Doesn’t that change things?” I say. He draws this back to a story from his time as a chef when customers would have dietary restrictions based on their religion, asking for Kosher of Halal meals. He is aware that he did not have to serve them under such restrictions, but he did anyway, “I did it cause I respect them as a human. I don’t want to offend them.” That’s what this issue comes down to for him, humanity. The internet is helping with this process, sort of anyways. “were at the cusp of figuring out what our humanity really is. It scares and relieves me,” he says, noting the increased ease of our interconnectivity. But the connectivity rings hallow most of the time, “the phone doesn’t put me any closer to the people on the other end of it.”

All of this came to a head in the Presidential election, but the meader proceeds with caution, “I said this last election, it hasn’t gotten bad enough or someone to do something about it. It hasn’t gotten shitty enough.” Politics has been an ebb and flow of relative similarity because the situation in America not dire enough to warrant anything else, he believes. “For the most part, America is a great place to live,” he notes, listing out all the activities he did the day prior, “and I wasn’t shot, bombed, and didn’t have to worry about the water in my cup of coffee. There aren’t a lot of places you can say that.” He punctuates that point, “This whole Make America Great Again horse shit, America is great!” For all these successes, he does think our foreign policy is fatally flawed, focusing too much on those a world away, “there are problems here.” He thinks we should focus on the humanitarian crises at home and in Mexico, “it’s great that we go into these countries and help and give aid—good, America should be altruistic, but it’s too convoluted for the average America to follow.” That said, it is a flaw of the system that we have to even choose where to help, “America politics forces you to choose which wrong is the right one.” We create paradigms where they don’t have to exist. But these sorts of conversations don’t happen often in his tasting room, “I don’t say a lot of these things, I don’t want to get painted into a corner,” his views are nuanced, and he doesn’t want to just throw them out there and have him reflected upon as a result. “I see a lot of people walk through that door, and there just that, people. I wish more people felt like that.” By this point in the evening, I am feeling pretty dejected. I’ve been struggling the past few days to figure out what I’m even trying to accomplish out here on the road. These interviews are often tough to sit through and harder to write about with compassion. (I haven’t gotten ‘Adam and Steved’ in years, Y'all.) Politics seems to be getting worse by the tweet, and I just want to do something that matters. I wrapped up these interviews and went to grab a quick dinner at a local polish diner, Sokolowski’s University Inn. In the long line for food, I struck up a conversation with a woman named Allyson.

She’s shared with me local politics, the best traditional food to order, and asked me all about my trip. We talked about the controversy over the Cleveland Indians mascot in whispered tones, afraid to upset the other locals in line while we looked at an exceptionally racist caricature of a Native American. After I finally got my food (chicken paprikash and two sides,) I planned on quickly eating alone and calling it a night. Instead, Allyson’s extended family insisted I join them for dinner, even though they were celebrating their dad’s 70th birthday. Each of them welcomed me to the table, asked about my travels, and shared their own thoughts on democracy. We laughed! We ate perogies and homemade chocolate cake!! The birthday boy, Alex, sat across from me and talked about his immigrant family. “immigrants built this community, I can’t for the life of me see why we’re talking about only bringing in the ‘best and the brightest; the sweat of immigrants built this country.” His immigrant family cooked meals like the one we shared at Sokolowski’s, “we didn’t know this was gourmet,” he laughs, “this is just what mom made.”

With this simple act, this family welcomed me into their lives. With their generosity, my faith in people was renewed. If people like this exist, even in spite of all the others, we are going to be okay. If I had a solution for the division that makes it so hard to turn on the news, it would be just this—invite a stranger to dinner. Get to know someone whose life experience looks nothing at all like your own. It’s a concept I have thought a lot about, but it always seems far off, more philosophical than practical. This kind family proved me wrong. Thank you Kozak family for your unquestionable kindness and a damn good chocolate cake.