HOME is a four letter word. It's so much more than that but it's often overbearing to think about it past that line. I have a complicated relationship with it that I still struggle with. The only thing that it's still directly hitched to is FOOD. The relationship is just as complicated there. We are fed the fears, anxieties, beliefs, loves, doubts of our parents, just as they were fed. Often, we simply inherit the food without a complete recipe.

As a child of a certain era, I ate off of dishwasher safe novelty plates, usually from a golden arches birthday party. I had meals that are more of a comfort to me than any place will be. I had meals that became punishment, marinated in guilt. Red soft drink tumblers filled with clear and opaque much like my range of understanding of my own emotions, but always red filtered through eyes that were passed down to me without an instruction manual or a pictogram.

Meals are the main discussion before I travel home for the holidays. Clearly, the importance of nourishment was passed down laden with the brambles as it came down the family tree. These photos were taken in my childhood home on a holiday visit in 2018. Wares of materialism fill the empty space like an extra serving of mac and cheese to fill gap between my feelings and my understanding of them. I see so much of myself in them that it hurts and my feelings are the meal I know best.

Plates are melamine and dishwasher safe. Tumblers are dishwasher safe plastic.