A cup of zoom and a dash of isolation? This Hamilton mother wants to make a 'recipe book' of pandemic stories

Growing up in Mexico, one of Edith Chavez's biggest passions was public speaking. 

But when she moved to Canada in 2008, she said she felt like the "Little Mermaid" — the Disney princess who lost the ability to speak — because not knowing English took away her voice.

Today Chavez not only has her voice back but it is featured as part of the Workers Arts and Heritage Centre's exhibition "Together While Apart," which is on display until May 14 in Hamilton.

The interactive exhibit features stories from various artists "based on experiences that women and gender-diverse people have faced during the past two years of the COVID-19 pandemic." It also invites the community to participate in the work, via take-home colouring pages and the ability to colour on the gallery's walls.

"It's been like a very difficult two years for pretty much everyone that we know," exhibition coordinator Sonali Menezes told CBC. "So we really wanted to put together a project that would be hopeful, inspiring, interactive and playful."

Chavez made a unique contribution to the exhibit — her own COVID-19 story, in the form of a soup recipe. 

"Every household is a bowl with different ingredients," she says in a performance of her story.

"I want to share my soup with you… Ingredients: one cup of single mom. One cup of a nine-year-old boy. A whole back-to-school online, but make sure to cut it in halves… Sprinkle some immigrant background, with no family members around…" 

Chavez, who does stand-up comedy when she's not parenting or running her own cleaning business, says the inspiration for her part of the project came from seeing the different reactions her friends and family had over the past two years. 

"At the start of the pandemic, it seemed like everybody was on the same page," she said in an interview translated from Spanish. "But as time passed, some friends became extremely isolated, and others simply didn't care [about the pandemic]."

She said she thought people were "going crazy," but then asked herself what those people were going through that made them think the way they did.

"Then I said, 'well, you don't know if they're sick or what's going on in their mind or bodies that won't let them go out, and those who don't seem to care maybe only want [physical connection]' so I think everyone has an element that changes us."

That's how she started thinking about people's experiences as different recipes. 

"I realized that we're not so different, we just have different conditions. For example, if I remove my status as a single mother [from the soup], or if I was still married, [my soup] would have been completely different."