Mother made our kitchen cupboard in Copenhagen from reclaimed window frames. She's ascetic, minimalistic and was a Maoist, it's fair to say. She was very much into the Chinese revolution and everything Chinese, and fried a lot of rice. My brother and I used chopsticks from a very early age. I was interested only in desserts, but she never made any, although sometimes she put chocolate on rye bread in the school lunchbox. I'd try ways to eat the bread first and chocolate last. And there was sometimes the 15-minute ritual of stirring egg yolk with sugar to make an eggnog.
My brother and I had to do the dishes every night, so had endless fights because we both wanted to dry. I'd usually wash because he'd disappear to the toilet at the decisive moment. He'd also whip me with the tea towel. So there was a lot of shouting and screaming and smashing of glasses and plates, but my mother always made us continue. Whereas today, if my own kids were destroying my porcelain every evening, I'd probably let them off the hook and take over.
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