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Collected Item: “The Happy Little Chef”

Give your story a title.

The Happy Little Chef

What sort of object is this: text story, photograph, video, audio interview, screenshot, drawing, meme, etc.?

Photographs, video

Tell us a story; share your experience. Describe what the object or story you've uploaded says about the pandemic, and/or why what you've submitted is important to you.

The media focuses a lot on the losses children are facing during the pandemic. And while I certainly would prefer that the virus was contained and my son would be able to attend school in person, take piano lessons with his piano teacher beside him instead of on a Facetime call, and play with a friend outside of his older sister, my six year old son is genuinely enjoying quarantine. I realize this is a privilege - we have a backyard, space, two working adults who can afford food and technology, and a live-in grandma who can help with any distance learning issues. But my son seems to be thriving in this much simpler and quieter life. We always did a lot together as a family, but we did not spend a lot of time actually at home. Now that we’ve been home together for over ten months, we have settled into this new life that involves my son helping my husband make dinner every night. And he LOVES it. It’s not as though he had never cooked before, but to be able to do it every night, side by side with his dad is an experience he did not have in our pre-quarantine life that was much faster paced and on the go. Many nights, the little chef will bring me a menu that outlines the dinner and asks for my order. He takes such pride in telling all of us what parts of the meal he was in charge of. He assures us he is both the owner and the “cooker” of the restaurant and that his daddy is his employee. When dinner is over, he asks to take my plate, and has recently become very interested in washing all the dinner dishes himself (no complaints here). I certainly long for the day that we can go back out in the world, but I feel very blessed that my son will be able to look back at this year with happiness, even in the midst of such a dire situation.

Use one-word hashtags (separated by commas) to describe your story. For example: Where did it originate? How does this object make you feel? How does this object relate to the pandemic?

Arizona State University, HST580, childhood, cooking, fatherhood, togetherness, imagination, dinner

Who originally created this object? (If you created this object, such as photo, then put "self" here.)

Kathryn Jue

Give this story a date.

2021-01-19
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