For years, my mom nurtured me when I was sick in ways coded in her bones. She would cook rice porridge until every individual grain of rice melded together into a soft canvas and add toppings she knew my stomach could take. Everything worked in harmony, but I didn’t know it back then. Because with every spoonful, I had closed my eyes and pretended I was eating chicken noodle soup.
I thought chicken noodle soup was what everyone else ate when they were sick. We colored drawings of Campbell’s cans in art class in hues that popped. Even the comforting series of stories for the soul we would devour as preteens were named after it.
But like the series, what I had been consuming—in books, TV, songs—was a world away from what my family was like. (Confession: In middle school and high school I told myself I would create a pen name and never write stories about Chinese experiences because I didn’t want to immediately be cast as an Asian American writer.) It took a long time for me to realize that what I was consuming were not the stories I really wanted to read, nor were they the stories I wanted to tell.
I didn’t get my first taste of chicken noodle soup until college, a large plastic cup-filled to the brim from Ralph’s that I popped in the microwave, to nurse my own cold. The not-so-crazy thing was, I immediately craved my mother’s rice porridge.
Since then, I’ve been creating versions based on hers. (But never as good as hers. I’m not patient enough to wait for the rice to break down enough.) I would read as much material as I could about rice porridge, or congee, or jook, or xifan (as my mother calls it.)
And through this journey I’ve continually been surprised at all the history contained in a bowl of grains.
Xifan is often given to babies as the first non-milk food. It’s also comfort food for elders who look for softer textures. It’s there for the sick, for those away from home, for those with few ingredients in the pantry. My mom could stretch a few cups of rice into a giant pot of xifan and flavor it with leftovers in more strapped times or top it with salted duck eggs and dried, shredded pork in richer times. And because of this flexibility, xifan can take thousands of forms with various types of grains. And it has since 1,000 B.C.—every bowl, simple yet complex, humble yet colorful, creamy yet multi-textured, individualized yet inter-generational.
In a “Chef’s Table” episode, the South Korean Buddhist nun Jeong Kwan uses food as a form of communication and prayer. She perfectly articulated something I had been trying to understand for a while:
“If you look into yourself, you see past, present, and future. You see that time revolves endlessly. You can see past from the present. By looking into myself, I see my grandmother, my mother, the elders in the temple, and me. As a result, by making soy sauce, I am reliving the wisdom of my ancestors. I am reliving them. It’s not important who or when. What is important is that I’m doing it in the present.
I use soy sauce, and I acknowledge its importance. It is no longer just me that’s doing things. It’s me in the past, in the present, and even in the future. Soy sauce is eternal. It is life itself.”
Jeong Kwan is 100 percent right about the amazingness of soy sauce. But even more than that, she captures what we often forget to do when we cook. Acknowledge the food we’re eating. Acknowledge the hands that have contributed to shaping the ingredients throughout time. Acknowledge our ancestors.
“Even today, when I see something beautiful, or make or see beautiful food, I thank my parents for their energy and virtue. The food I prepare is an expression of gratitude to my parents. They let me become who I am.”
I’m on the ferry headed home. As we weave between islands, my eyes scan the Sound for any signs of dorsal fins, for larger than usual splashes amongst the choppy waves, perhaps of Tahlequah once again carrying around her dead calf, J61. The first time, in 2018, she had carried her dead calf for more than 17 days and for 1,000 miles. But I don’t have binoculars, and I am, as usual, in the wrong spot at the wrong time.
“What’s that?!” Lucas jokes and looks out into the water, as I transfer Sylvie to him so that they can prance around in the passenger deck, and I can sit in the car. I shoot him a glare then burrow in the car with my napping dog, Barley, staring into the thick fog that shrouds the islands until they look like faded photographs. The water today is a light green, mixed with ice blue, smeared with white pastel. It’s the color of cold, of grief and reincarnation.
At the start of our mini family vacation, I didn’t even hope to see an Orca, or any whale (or killer whale), in our few days in the San Juan Islands. It was winter, after all, and all the Facebook posts from the Orca-watching community spotted the pods in Puget Sound, closer to Vashon or Whidbey or the islands near Seattle—ironically, where we left, where I’d never in my day-to-day have the time to look out into the water and think about endangered killer whales, or about much of anything besides work and when Sylvie sleeps and what we eat and is that a moldy smell in our house?
And yet, each day on our vacation, I’d still skim the Facebook group to see people chime in the threads with where they spotted the whales, and where they thought they were heading; new eyes picked up where former ones left off and commented, as the pods traveled north or south, milling or moving. People posted photos of their encounters, of the processions of black and white giants, jumping, playing, pushing through, or in Tahlequah’s case, mourning.
On New Year’s Day, as Lucas rocked Sylvie to sleep, news of Tahlequah’s latest loss on New Year’s Eve had spread and I found myself refreshing my phone repeatedly, reading comments, looking for photos. A mother drawn to a mother, grief drawn to grief. “Maybe she doesn’t have enough milk,” a comment read, amongst a sea of people lamenting the lack of salmon, pointing out it was her second loss. I thought back to how I had no milk when Sylvie was cut out of me. How they had run the breast pump over and over, squeezing me all day for dribbles, not taking emptiness for an answer. I am a mother after all, shouldn’t I be able to feed my child who was constantly shrieking at us from hunger? Finally, one of the nurses offered us formula—yes, yes yes, I had said, not wanting my child to starve to death.
I heard Lucas play “Rock-a-bye Baby” and cried when I read about Tahlequah, how she continues to snatch back her calf from the waves before it is swept away. She pushes its body, weighing hundreds of pounds, with her head, sometimes carrying it between fin and teeth. It weakens her, but how can you let go when you had hope for a new start?
When the bough breaks the cradle will fall,
And down will come baby, cradle and all.
The ferry is arriving in Anacortes, and the horizon still stretches out, somehow empty yet full. An announcement crackles through the loudspeakers to take our belongings with us. I consider what I want to take with me into this new year. I consider Tahlequah, who takes her calf through and through; though the world once again grieves with her, to her, it is just her and her child, as she confronts the waters minute by minute.
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I took with me Sylvie’s stuffed animals (she picked three for the trip) and placed them on her belly. She hugged them tight and asked me to rock her. There was no rocking chair so I strung her across my arm and lap, and rocked my body back and forth on the bed. Then she wanted me to put her in her Pack ‘n’ Play (which she is too large for). Then to rock her again. Then to put her on our bed. Then to rock her. Usually I would draw a line, but as I hugged her tight while she hugged her stuffed animals tight. I could still feel her fever burning under and through her skin. It was coming down, but barely, with the alternating use of Tylenol and Motrin.
“Poor Sylvie.”
Her fever had started on the first night of our vacation. For those first few nights we barely slept. After she cried every 20 minutes, I had carried her into bed with us. It was our first time co-sleeping. It was nice to feel her body cuddled against mine. Until there was a kick to the uterus or a piercing scream right in my ear. She was angry to be awake. She was angry she was not feeling well. She was angry angry angry.
And we were so exhausted.
During the mornings we would go on walks in the wind, in the drizzle, in the cold. Sometimes the sun would hit us. And everything would set her off—not being carried, being carried, being in her car seat, not wanting to eat, the wrong sock, or for reasons I just couldn’t figure out. Tantrums for her, and any toddler, were normal, but the frequency of them during the trip and the need for us to be just hardly, constantly, one step ahead of a meltdown sucked the life out of me and Lucas. We could barely get a complete sentence to each other that wasn’t about caretaking or planning the next step.
“This is too hard,” I said to Lucas, after Sylvie finally settled down again for the night. I’m not meant to be a mother. Wait, did I say that part out loud? He opened a bottle of wine. It was New Year’s Eve. We had intended to celebrate.
“You’re a good mom. We are good parents.”
I sank into the couch as he asked me about the best and worst moments of 2024.
Sylvie swimming, dancing, stomping.
Meltdowns at a wedding.
Getting a massage child-free.
All the times she was sick.
Eating in Vancouver.
There were always highs and lows, the pull of each tide shaping coastal ecosystems.
Gravity, Sylvie had learned and echoed this past year in her toddler-speak, is when things fall down. Then she would drop a stuffed animal, or her food.
I would chuckle, then pick it back up.
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I took with me a bag of a dozen oysters, High Beach Sweets harvested in Westcott Bay, into the car. With almost all the restaurants closed for winter break, I was most excited about getting fresh oysters straight from the farm. And lucky me, within the four days we were there, they’d be open for three hours on New Year’s Eve.
We drove back down Westcott Drive, admiring the quirky and PNW-themed mailboxes along the way.
“I’m still worried about the Norovirus outbreak,” I told Lucas. Just after placing my order, I had read news of Norovirus outbreaks in oysters found in Washington and British Columbia. “This should be fine right?” I asked, knowing he couldn’t answer it. “They were other companies and other bays and other farms that were affected. Right?”
I stare at the bag of white, gray shells, covered in ice. I had imagined enjoying them with a glass of white wine. I had imagined embracing the definition of chill for once. I had even brought our shucker with us on the trip, just for this moment.
And yet, when we arrived back at the condo, before Lucas had helped me shuck the whole dozen, I examined each one to make sure they were closed shut. And after he had shucked them, I examined each muscle, valve, gill, every bit of flesh and liquor for … what would Norovirus even look like? Poop maybe? Did this one look funky, like it had too much grit? My anxious nature took over and I threw one away for good measure.
“Whatever, it’ll be okay,” I said, but did not believe. I spooned some vinaigrette onto an oyster and slurped it down. Refreshing, cold, salty sea hit my tongue and down my throat. Nothing tasted off, but then again, how do you know?
Lucas ate one, his one “meat of the year,” he called it as a vegetarian. The rest were up to me.
I ate all fresh but three, willing myself to enjoy each one—because they were so good. Then somehow, I got it in my brain that I had to cook the last three, you know, to decrease the odds of me getting Norovirus. But we had no grill, and the condo kitchen had no oil or butter or condiments, and my shellfish’s shelf life was quickly expiring. So I threw the last three in boiling water and immediately regretted my decision.
I watched the beautiful oysters, plump and full of life, shrivel and turn opaque.
I ate each of them, chewing for far too long, hoping no one would ever know, and hoping that maybe in 2025, I will 1) not let anxiety ruin enjoying the moment and 2) not get Norovirus.
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We took with us the hiking backpack, which Sylvie was also outgrowing, her head butting up against the sun and wind shield, Lucas grunting as he swung it and her across his back.
Over the last two years she had napped in it, laughed in it, pointed out trees and animals in it. Older couples often stopped us in our trails to mention how they had fashioned one just like it before for their kids, before there were so many babywearing options on the market.
On our last day on San Juan Island, Sylvie’s fever was gone and she was finally eating again. We hiked up to the Cattle Point Lighthouse. It was smaller than the Lime Kiln one, with grassy dunes stretching across for miles. Eagles soared. Birds chirped. It had even stopped raining.
“There might be foxes,” I said. And before I knew it, Sylvie became obsessed with the idea of seeing a fox. Not wanting to let her down, I told her they were likely sleeping or hiding from the cold.
For most of the walk, there was no one in sight. Just me, and Lucas, and Sylvie, and Barley. When we got to the lighthouse, we peered down the edge, against glacier-carved rocks and into the stunning Salish Sea. Can’t believe the Americans and British almost went to war over a pig, I thought. Or actually, I can. We were always at war, there was always violence and grief.
“Sylvie, let’s try to be quiet and just listen,” I said. Sylvie immediately stopped asking about foxes, intrigued by the exercise. So just for a minute, we stood there, tiny specks to nobody. The quiet washed over us. Then we heard the waves lapping, the birds singing, the wind howling. It was just for a minute, but it was all we needed.
From the view of one of the men’s camera, we see them hiding behind a plant in the art museum. The viewer can hear them trying to keep their breathing light when, coming from off-screen, there is the clicking of heels approaching. The men freeze in their positions and we listen as the clicking gets closer and closer. Slowly, the clicking can be heard right next to the plant but strangely doesn’t stop there. Rather, they continue forward and the men watch as a beautiful woman appears. She is very tall, probably 8 feet without the heels. She wears a short, fitted dress that is of a shimmering silver color and the heels she wears are red stilettos. She has long blonde hair that trails down her back, past her hips. The men literally hold their breath as she continues walking through the hallway of the museum. Then, she stops. The men don’t move. She turns her head to the side for a moment, and then looks over her shoulder to stare directly at them. Her eyes are a fierce blue and her mouth holds what could even be called disgust. She studies them for a moment, then turns and continues on. The men let out their breath. Whether they realize it or not, they have escaped the wrath of Aphrodite.
In the same week I learned to fold dumplings through a virtual class (hosted by a mom and daughter duo), I learned my mom had never voted in a U.S. election.
“Remember to vote!” I texted my family.
“I don’t like politics,” my sister said, the same person who had been complaining about the president every day.
“Wait, did you not register yet?! Did mom?”
My zero-to-rage meter shot up faster than usual, and I panic-googled the registration deadlines for Nevada.
I had never questioned that my mom wouldn’t be registered. She had seen me go canvassing in high school before I could even vote. Other canvassers would knock on our door at home when I went to college. But I should’ve known--I didn’t grow up in a household that talked politics. (When do you talk politics, between the rush of my parents going to work and caring for us? How do you talk politics when there’s a language barrier, when what I learned about the political and governing systems through school seemed so distant to their lived reality?)
I was texting voters in different states about their voting plans, trying to get disinterested voters to believe that their vote counts (”vote your values,” “there’s so much at stake--the pandemic, health care, systemic racism, the climate crisis”), but I had overlooked my own family.
“I’m too old to vote,” my mom said.
I had to tell her most voters were older, and what she thinks still matters.
“Do we have to register for a party? Do you have to vote for everything?”
You don’t have to, I said. The anxieties around making a political opinion, around giving information away was palpable and understandable. And no one had ever explained the way voting works to her, the deadlines, the mailing process.
In the conversation, in a very messy mix of English and Mandarin, I was also trying to ease the same anxieties passed down to my sister.
In the dumpling class, the daughter said that when she was having a hard time folding as a kid, she would just press the edges together as hard as she could. Whatever you do, even if it doesn’t look pretty, you just press them together hard to get a tight seal to avoid the filling from leaking out later.
With each fold, I was thinking, press and hold, press and hold, like what you learn to do to stop the bleeding.
“Okay, we’ll register tomorrow.”
“Okay, I’ll call you again tomorrow then.”
I called them back the next night. She repeated the same anxieties, and I gave her the same reassurances.
When you gently place the dumplings in a pot of boiling water, all you can do is wait and see and hope it doesn’t break open.
She gave my sister her I.D., and both of them registered that night.
The dumplings floated to the top, the same lesson I’d learned from both my parents over and over again. You wait, and they’ll float to the top when they’re ready.
Check on those around you. Remind them their vote matters. Who do you want to negotiate on your behalf, not just for the president but for other elected local officials that impact our day-to-day lives? Remind them yes, the system is broken, but not participating doesn’t make the system better. Really listen to them. Maybe all this time, no one else has.
A month ago, Lucas and I took some time off, our first break all year to truly disconnect from work. There was still so much of the Puget Sound area that we hadn’t explored, so we decided to do a few nature walks and hikes.
But I have a phobia of walking down steep things, or paths with a big drop besides it. Sometimes I have to take a breath at the top of a long set of stairs before I take my first step down. Sometimes I get so scared that I end up scooting down a path on my behind. I feel a lot of shame about my phobia, especially when those around me are avid nature lovers. So when we go for hikes, Lucas and I make an effort to look up the trails to make sure it’s doable for me.
Poo Poo Point seemed doable (yes, that’s the name, and not my nickname for it based on how I later felt about it; it was named after whistles once heard by loggers on Tiger Mountain). We watched videos, looked through photos, read reviews. Many said it was steep for the beginning of the trail, but it would get better.
When we got there, it was steep the whole way up. “Are we on the wrong trail?” I kept asking Lucas. The whole time climbing up, I was worried about the hike down. I didn’t expect the miles of switchbacks. I didn’t expect the sharp drop of the mountainside. I didn’t expect the constant rockiness of the trail. A family was letting their toddler walk a few feet, then carried her a bit, then let her climb again. If this toddler’s okay here, you will be too, I snapped at myself internally. After a LOT of breaks, we got up to the field at the top where paragliders usually launch off.
I couldn’t stomach the sandwiches we brought. I couldn’t enjoy the view. I was worried about what would come next.
On the way down, when the trail was a little wider, I started strong but then it quickly started to look narrower and grew steeper in my mind. Like vertigo. My feet were frozen. I barely got them to move an inch. Lucas held Barley, who kept charging forward or looking over the mountain side, with one hand, and held mine with the other. I knew that logically it was less safe for me to hold his hand on the narrow trail, that my weight would not be centered. But I couldn’t move forward without him. Sometimes it took me what felt like ten minutes to move five feet.
Whenever people needed to pass on their way up, I would flatten my back against the mountainside, sometimes holding onto a tree, sometimes subconsciously digging my nails into a wall of dirt. When we had to move again a few times I crouched down because I wanted to feel lower to the ground, but then I couldn’t get myself to stand back up. Because I was too scared to find my center. Because I didn’t trust my feet, and I didn’t trust the ground.
“Wait, please wait,” “Hold on,” “I can’t,” I remember saying to Lucas constantly.
Twice people behind us had to pass. “Sorry,” I couldn’t help but say. “I have a phobia.” or “I’m scared.” Both times they told me not to rush. It’s okay. Take your time. We can pass when it’s safer. I repeated their words and kindness to myself, it’s okay, take your time. And after I was able to let them path, I took my mask off, and both times I cried. There were tears and mud on my face. I couldn’t breathe. My heart was pounding. I felt embarrassed. If children could walk these paths, why couldn’t I? Barley was zipping back and forth in front of me, sometimes trying to put his paw on me, because he could feel something was wrong. But I was too stressed out and snapped at him to stop.
I tried to imagine a safe wall but could only see the drop. The thing about fears and stress is that when it’s a constant thing, pressing on you continuously for hours, nothing feels rational. Even recounting it right now, I can feel the heat rise to my face, the tears rise to my eyes.
When we finally got to the bottom, my legs were trembling, my whole body shaky. I didn’t know why I could walk up but not down. Everything felt hot.
We drove back to Seattle and stopped at a matcha place for takeout. I wanted to dive into the soothing green. Let me float. Calm me down.
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Over the weekend, we brought Barley to a city park we’d never gone to before. I wasn’t prepared. This time, for the first time while walking up something, I felt the same fears I had while hiking down the Poo Poo Point trail. I wore the wrong shoes. I thought about how it had no grip while the soles of my feet slipped a little here, a little there, enough to make me freeze and sit on the trail and break down. We were just supposed to be going to a dog park.
I don’t know where to put my feet. I forgot how to walk. I kept saying all this out loud. “I’m right here,” Lucas kept saying.
He suggested I put my arm around his shoulder and he helped me to my feet. I instantly felt calmer, more solid. We slowly walked to the top, where the path opened up to a dog park. I thought about how if I were by myself, I would’ve still been stuck sitting on the trail until someone found me.
Somehow my fear has worsened. Somehow my anxiety has ballooned into something paralyzing.
I’m sure there will be a next time, and I hope the strangers’ words and Lucas’ words will be able to help me push through it. It’s okay. Take your time. I’m right here.
Broke out of my Animal Crossing haze for a bit over the weekend to try to make Biang Biang noodles for the first time. It felt nice to use only flour, salt and water to make something chewy and magical--to use my hands, to knead the flour, to pinch the dough to see if it would spring back.
The process took a lot of kneading and resting, until we got to slap the strips against our wooden board, pulling as we banged it against the surface to stretch it out into long noodles that span four feet. Biang. Biang. Biang.
Long noodles, long life. Is that something my mom has said to me? I remember birthday noodles and myths of not breaking noodles, to slurp it all up in one full breath, as one full strand, so as not to cut your life short. Or maybe it was told to me by the mothers in stories I’ve read or imagined, mothers who say things because they’ve heard things. And they inhale every little bit, superstitious or not, and pass it onto you because if it’ll give you a fighting chance, why not? Better safe than sorry. Better whole than cut.
And so we made the longest noodles I’ve ever tried. And we stretch and we stretch.
When I ate it, coated in oil and spices, I couldn’t help but only stop when I made it to the other end. A thick connective thread, an elastic string, a chain of truths and untruths. Maybe I made up the myths myself.
What I really wanted to talk about today was the new Animal Crossing, and how for the last week, I’ve been catching butterflies and fishing for salmon and picking seashells off the beach. I get why so many people are playing it right now. We can do things you can’t do in reality. We get to visit your friends’ islands and wish upon shooting stars together. There’s no real overfishing, we can DIY trash, we can watch trees grow in three days with just a single fruit.
Underneath it all, it’s hard to ignore the capitalism. The neverending house payments so we can make our house larger. The (turnip) stalk market. The fact we’re doing manual labor so we can give what we collect to Tom Nook’s kids and receive money he made up. We pillage mystery islands and leave them filled with tarantulas.
But we try to push most of it aside because in this paradise, we can overcome problems we have in the real world. We can make enough to meet the next bill, without consequences. We can visit people’s homes and make ours bigger than a studio or one-bedroom apart. We can escape into a version of reality that won’t truly hurt us, in a time when it seems like everything can.
So we stretch and we stretch, a chain of truths and untruths, until we form something comforting and understandable.
Exhaustion takes over my other emotions. It’s not a physical exhaustion, but a mental one with a hold so strong that it anchors my core to the bed most mornings, keeping my limbs from finding ground until I absolutely have to.
The thought of what we’ll find out today, and the next and the next, make things a little heavier, a little more unfixable. Maybe its the paralysis, the inaction, the thought that I could be doing something to help. But instead I buy toilet paper and tissues, scroll through feeds, bake cookies late at night. I look at book spines from afar, I want to order takeout but don’t want to decide, I let work sink to the bottom of the list while I sink deeper into my couch in the day time, in the evenings, in the every time.
Exhaustion feels like your edges are kind of crumbly and your insides are overstretched, like everything’s happening at the same time, all the time. Are you feeling it too? The decision to let the plates stack in the sink, ceramics connected and stuck together by oils and fats. But you clean them in your dreams, just like you wake up faster in your dreams and think you’re brushing your teeth, and getting dressed, and starting your day.
Even your passions exhaust you. The bok choy wilting in the fridge because some days ago you thought you would want to try handmaking biang biang noodles. You write one sentence and delete four. You leave the yoga mats rolled up, collecting dust and dog fur because the expectation of unrolling them is so high.
You think about your future selves and your past selves and search for moments where you don’t grind your teeth and actually call your mother.
“Tired, tired with nothing, tired with everything, tired with the world’s weight he had never chosen to bear.”
- F. Scott Fitzgerald
And then sometime, after you’ve sunk far enough and long enough into the crevice of the couch, maybe after your dog nudges your arm up with his nose or your husband orders the takeout, you’ll find the energy again, you’ll understand you were exhausted because you care.
But for now, bring a cozy blanket up to your shoulders and ease into the grooves. Hold a hot mug of tea in your hands because that’s all you want to do, even if you can’t bring yourself to drink it. Maybe you’ll sleep without dreaming of anything productive.
