Like, take Mom's soups for instance.
For all of my thirty years of existence, Mom's painstakingly-boiled soups have always been "just another dish on the dinner table". (Actually, Mom's so immune to cooking soup everyday, I don't think it's any longer a painstaking process.) I mean, I love the soups, anyday. But yeah, it's there everyday and I take it for granted. Like on days when Mom serves only boring egg soup (you practically crack a couple of eggs into boiling water and add some salt for taste, and maybe some minced chicken), I frown at her and wonder why she was so lazy that day. When I find out from friends that soups are a rare delicacy on their own dinner tables, I exclaim, "WHAT?! No soup?!"
My most despicable, unfilial act came to a head when I began eschewing Mom's soups - in favor of my other beverage of preference, like, of course, alcoholic ones. I almost stopped going home for dinners every night, preferring instead to hang out at the villa with the chicks. Mom was kind, very kind enough to never quite nag at me for not eating home at nights. Too kind in fact, when she started telling me, "Mei ah, you everyday eat outside, not good. (Mom is so kind, she never talks about my drinking, though she knows because she still has a good nose) I am going to cook this (very nutritious) soup for you tonight, when you come home (and she knows I will come home very late), you remember to heat it up and drink ah."
At the other end of the phone call, I would be scrunching up my face, "O-K." To me, heating up and drinking soup after a night of drinks was a very troublesome process, I just wanted to flop onto bed and sleep. Of course, I usually forgot about the soups, especially on nights when I just flopped on the sofa and slept.
Mom would call me the next day while I was already out, "Mei! Last night never drink soup ah? Tonight, must remember ah." And then, sometime around eight in the evening, the phone would ring again, "Mei ah, tonight come back, remember ah."
Then, I would forget again.
It even came to a point when Mom would wake up from her sleep the minute I stepped into the house at midnight (that's an understatement), and then get up and heat the soup for me. Some nights, I would feel really bad. Others, I would feel like I was being forced soup down my throat.
But I was not all that bad, ok. Eventually, I did try to remember to heat-the-soup-and-drink. Then I changed tactics: I started insisting that Mom stopped cooking soups for me if I wasn't home for dinner. But then, I would see the heartbreak in her eyes.
Another change of tactic: I started requesting Mom to cook certain soups. And I promised to drink them at nights, whether I was home for dinner or not.
There are not many other ways to make my Mom light up, but requesting for her soups is surely one.
I have been pining for Mom's soups for the longest time since I left her.
And it hasn't helped that I have also been sickly for the longest time since I came here. And I have never been this sickly all my life.
I have been looking up recipes on boiled soups, the traditional Cantonese way, the way Mom cooks her soups. But they don't seem to look as good as Mom's soups taste.
I have also been eyeing one of those vacuum thermal pots at the departmental stores. It all looks rather obviously easy. I could just pop in all the ingredients into the thermal pot and let them cook for the ten hours while I would be at work. I live right on the street where all the Chinese medicinal halls and dried-goods stores line up in rows. My good friend at work even bought me an English-Chinese soup recipe book for my birthday! What's there to say 'no' to?
I don't know. Maybe it's fear.
What if my soups don't taste like Mom's? I know I would be really, really disappointed.
The next time I go home, I am going home to drink soup everyday. Heck, make that breakfast and dinner.
And then, I am going to steal some recipes from Mom.
Perhaps, I am not that deprived of late. I thank my stars for blessing me with true good friends along my journey of life, no matter where I may be.
And I just know it. I know I am being loved when someone buys me good ol' soup, especially when they know of my secret yearning. Even if it comes in a takeaway cupboard cup.
Like I always think, love touches not only your heart, but your stomach too.
No comments:
Post a Comment