“You have to eat and keep going. Eating is a
small, good thing in a time like this,” Raymond Carver
I made a pot
of soup, enough to feed a few dozen people.
As I watched
the split peas melt into a creamy concoction inside my pot, I realized I’ve
never made soup before. More importantly, I’ve never wanted to make soup, no
matter the depressing, dark Seattle days.
Soup is
something I bought, particularly, Vietnamese pho soup—studded with basil,
jalapenos and made bloody with Sriracha. Although these days, outstanding pho
is farther and farther to come by; I still remember the first time I had pho,
the soup was delicious in visceral and metaphysical ways—the way food should
be. Your stomach is full, and so is your heart.
My
grandmother, my so-called namesake, whom I never met, was an extraordinary cook
and homemaker. She was also a career woman, quite an astonishing feat in the
40’s and 50’s. Stories that I heard about her always revolved around her
astonishing capacity for cooking, and general homemaking skills. Her whole life
was made from scratch.
I always
wondered, what she would think of me now—her namesake, the granddaughter who is
her physical and spiritual replica. She’s a Taurus, by the way, and I, a Virgo.
In the language of astrology we’re both Earth creatures, women who were
practical, grounded, did as they were expected, toiled the earth. We didn’t
have any of that flightiness my mother has, or did we indulge in vacations and
spent hours seated in front of the TV like my sister, her other granddaughter.
We are doers, women who were constantly moving, doing and never being.
My life is a
drive thru kind of existence, even before I migrated to America. Food was
always bought from stores, kept in boxes. Old clothes left to fall apart, or
thrown away, never mended. Cleaning, I can appreciate. I can spend hours
cleaning my desk and de-cluttering my space. Anything else that closely
resembles housewife duties, I stay far, far away. I suppose my fear of
domesticity stems from my parents.
My mother
was raised as a debutante or a dilettante as I like to call her. This seems
harsh, except it’s the truth. She went to private schools, my grandmother could
never afford, to up her standing in society; to up her chances of marrying into
wealth. She married my father who is an engineer, a top brass engineer, but his
largesse was never quite enough. He always felt like a shell, like he was
always holding something back. This being the old world, she stayed at home and
raised four kids. Not that she was particularly happy about any of her life
decisions. I always thought she would have been more fulfilled being a single
girl about town; her stay at home persona never quite fit her.
Stirring the giant vat of soup, and reading
the recipe for tomato basil, I remembered why I never wanted to cook. Cooking
to me even as a child meant I have to stay home, and be home at a certain time
to take care of the husband, the kids, and maybe even the husband’s parents. I
was never one to follow rules, no matter how hard my parents, and my teachers
tried, I was always the girl who’s going to run away. I still am, in so many
ways, the woman I wanted to be when I was a child. Maybe this is why I ended up
alone, despite loving so many people; I’ve always wanted to be alone. I don’t want
to go home and cook for other human beings. When I go home, all I want to do is
read a book, and maybe grab some dinner on the way home. If I get to eating
dinner at all, otherwise, it’s cheese and some kind of protein.
As I get
older and seeing food elevated to status symbolism, I realize how I missed out
on the ritual of cooking, and nourishing yourself with food that you made. Food
never tastes quite as good when it’s transferred from a box, or bought out of a
store. The last dinner I cooked, I had salmon, broccoli, fresh pasta and a
cream-based sauce in the fridge. I’ve had the same meal countless of times in
various restaurants around the city, but this meal, this is what food tasted
like when it’s made with love. I fed on that meal for days, and I felt
satiated, warm and content.
Working in a
food store, I witness firsthand how people’s lives are increasingly centered on
food. It’s as if our lives have become increasingly dull and repetitive and we
strive to find excitement in the food that we eat. When I’m bored at work, I
gravitate towards our endless pastry display. Desserts never tastes as good as
it looks, in my experience anyway, but I like the proud look of it.
In another
life, I toyed with the idea of becoming a baker. I liked the precision of the
ingredients and the recipe, and the order of throwing all the elements
together. For a planner and a control freak, baking is one of life’s most
perfect jobs. But fate had other plans, as I like to say. Despite months of
looking for employment as a baker, I wasn’t getting any calls. Besides, the
unbearably low wages disheartened my quest. A baking life wasn’t mean to be. So
I put away the rolling pin, and the recipe for the mythical cake-like chocolate
chip cookie that I still think about every so often.
The academic/intellectual
life won over, and the rush of wanting to finish college whelmed me. I’ve
completely lost the desire to do good work in the restaurant industry, and when
once I was tirelessly picking up waitressing shifts all over Seattle and the
Eastside—that hunger went away. But that desire to serve, and be a part of
something bigger than myself, it's a love that never goes away. Maybe this is
why I went into the food world; I needed to be of service to the community.
Food is the easiest and fastest way to nourish, and really, it could even begin
with a pot of soup.
*Reference
Baldwin, Christina. Storycatcher. Novato, CA: New World Library. 2005. Print.
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