Always Welcome is a Social Arts Salon where you don't have to be afraid to get it right to be welcomed. Hosted by Mallorie Kris Greene Kristoffersen, performance ethnographer, teaching artist, and 9th-generation Howard County, Maryland native, each episode uses lived experience and lived stories as the vessel for fostering new connections and deeper shared meanings. From conversations with family to field research across Howard County, this is an investigation into what it means to be human in a culturally complex, constantly evolving world. Pull up a chair. You are always welcome here.
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This episode is an invitation into memory and learning to navigate the world as it shifts.
To sit, to be with, to get to know. That takes time. Thank you for giving me yours.
A note: you will hear slip-ups in this episode. This is the practice of not being perfect and of letting the conversation be what it is. Always Welcome is a living, breathing thing. Thank you for your grace and being with me in the practice of understanding.
Mallory, Mallarah, Mallorah. Hello, and welcome to the Always Welcome podcast. My name is Mallory Chris Green Christofferson, and today I'm going to take you back to one of my earliest childhood memories. Saltines with butter and American cheese. Looking at Tums and always wondering if they were candy, but being told not for kids. The sound of game shows and talk shows in the background as my grandmother, Sylvia Cofield, and her mother, Florence Cecilia Brooks, chatted about the daily life and people. The tub of water in the sink for dirty dishes, the dishes needing doing or unloading, the sound of the bowls as they were placed back on top of others on the shelf. This was my grandmother's kitchen, a place I often sat waiting for my mother to pick me up while she navigated kindergarten, errands, and everything for the household and family in life. In life, it's rare to find yourself never needing help. And yet, many of us struggle to ask for it. We struggle to seek the assistance of a knowing hand or mine. We'd rather watch a YouTube video and struggle through in hopes of getting it done on our own, whether that's to save time and money or to attain a new skill. I thoroughly enjoyed watching Renovation Realities and the other old house renovation shows where people attempt projects way out of their wheelhouse and then things go disastrously wrong. Really, guy, you're not a plumber. And then they gotta call a plumber and spend more money than they would have in the first place. We humans are an incredible species. And in the United States, we are a particularly interesting group, the can-do mindset and the brazen belief in our individual capabilities. And yet, we all of us need others. I deeply believe it is through relationships that our best and strongest selves are made known. I was raised by two military brats who came from strong Catholic families. Inherent in my understanding of the world is the need for others and the foundation of community for establishing security and connection to something beyond ourselves. If you tell me you've lost something, I get all sorts of itchy to help find it. I attribute this to my mother and the scavenger hunt she would host for all of the different children at her aftercare program that she ran for more than 20 years. Ted, I love a good hunt. A mystery, a search for understanding and meaning, a quest, an adventure, an opportunity to learn and discover. These are the spaces I enjoy inhabiting and seeking when the time provides me the opportunity to indulge in my spirit and soul. The aforementioned aftercare program was located at St. Margaret's Hall, one of the old buildings that was previously used as a convent, possibly a boarding room, for the Sisters of Notre Dame on the campus of Trinity School in Ellicott City, Maryland. At the time, it was both the French classrooms, administrative offices, and the before and after program for the elementary and middle school my sisters and I attended from kindergarten through eighth grade. Trinity Extended Day, also known as TED. This campus was magical. The winding road through the forest that opened up to a tree-lined playground, rolling fields, old tutor buildings all equipped with their own legends and ghost tales. Before I even attended, this campus was my playground for learning and knowing the world. Like most of us, my early memories are foggy. But the clearest of all, attending daily mass at Wild Lake Interfaith Center with my great-grandmother, Florence Cecilia Brooks. After mass, we'd head to Bagel Bin, I'd get a double cheese melt on a Supreme Bagel while Mama, my great-grandmother, would talk with her friends. Then she would take me to the drugstore, which I called the candy store because she would always get me a piece of candy after our daily mass routine. I liked getting hubba bubble tape. I might not have had a uniform when I arrived back to the playground where my mom was watching other children, but I could cut off pieces of bubble tape and level myself into being one of the big kids on the playground. Some days, when I didn't attend daily mass, I would go in with my mom and she would leave me in her van. It was the nineties, so a lot of us kids got used to just hanging out in cars. Mallory, Mallorah, Mallorah ha ha ha ha ha. And the most beautiful blonde and crystally blue eyes would greet me at the van door with the beauty and charisma of Doris Day. Slide open my mom's van door and carry me or guide me in to sit with other kids, or to my mom's office where she worked and I awoke from my afternoon slumber. These were my early days. This was what felt like every day until I began attending officially as the last green girl to move through the ranks at Trinity School. This memory is one I returned to as an origin, the shift of understanding and sitting in the world of my mother's grandmother, to the range of children my mom and her staff cared for on the school playground. I learned at a young age how to navigate and shift as the needs and perspectives of those around me shift. As those around me shifted. In life, we're navigating this shift on an everyday basis. We discover our patience, our limitations, we discover our strengths, our gifts in the spaces where we share presence. And presence is made possible through being open to the world around us. Living in the heart requires a level of openness to getting hurt, while also accepting a freedom that comes with responsibility and mindfulness. Living in the mind requires keeping up with the last thought in your head, but also the one thinking, the one you think is going through other people's heads. I'm not sure about you, but I have a tough enough time in my own head. I live in the heart. I don't want to be in other people's minds. And yet, here you are, in mine. Well, I hope you're in my heart as much as you are in my mind. Understanding requires a level of competency to traverse the unknown. We must remain open to receive the path forward, and yet so many of us still rely on ourselves to be the bearer of understanding. We sit in judgment and ask few questions. It's how we end up calling the plumber after spending time and money on parts and processes that barely understand, to sit, to be with, to get to know. That takes time. Thank you for taking this time. Thank you for giving me this space. Thank you for being and shifting and living exactly as you are. I'm Mallory Chris Green Christofferson. Thank you with love for listening. Over and out from Columbia, Maryland.
