I came home from an arduous session
of applied Calculus II and, as usual, my grandmother was boiling
something in a pot. The cookbook she kept exclusively in her mind was
extensive, and she never failed to execute every recipe with
delicious precision. Chicken adobo was my first favorite dish but,
like all things, that eventually changed. Kare kare took the place of
chicken adobo, and then pork sinigang after that. Favorite dishes
aside, as a food lover, every dish she made incited within me the
greatest of anticipations. “Foooood” my mind would chant like a
mantra of Eastern spirituality as the spices and herbs coaxed my
nostrils. Anxious for her to finish the task at hand I stepped into
the kitchen hoping my looming presence would somehow help the food
more quickly reach fruition. The sooner it was in my mouth the
better. The scene was a typical one in our household, but that day I
noticed something I never had before: the masked tension in the
slight curve of her upper back. It was unmistakably there but she hid
it from all of us: my grandfather, my parents, my brothers, myself. I
saw all of the gravelly, grassy miles of earth her feet had ever
carried her over. I heard all of the aspersions that had been spit
into her face, simply for believing what she believed. I saw the
squalor and filth she was raised around, but not in. I saw the world
she knew best and thought about how far away she was from it.
She was wearing a faded-lime green
ESPRIT crewneck sweater, the one she used to give me sink baths in.
It was spotted with lint, sleeves rolled up. Floral tsinelas hugged
her feet—slippers that would have been thwacking against the
linoleum if she had been walking. She picked the ladle up and began
to stir the contents of the pot. I knew it was neither chicken nor
pork she was stirring, but something else. It was a something that
she had been consistently stirring for decades, unnoticed by me. She
was stirring love. I saw that the steam rising from the love was not
water violently assimilating into the air, but sacrifice. I
recognized the twenty years that were selflessly given for me, but
that was only a small portion of what I saw. Decades of different
colors swirled together: the blue watchfulness that vigilantly
guided, and still guides, her five children, my mother being the
youngest; the red hope that they would possess the drive necessary to
make the most of themselves; the gold and silver shimmers signifying
an undying bond between her and my grandfather that promised they
would never part, not in this life or the next; the green nurture and
the yellow cackling laughter that stymied the various oppressions
that bore down on immigrants, both before and after their relocation.
The colors brought me to tears. All of that and what did she want in
return? For me to wash a few dishes, for me to help bring groceries
in from the Odyssey. Above all, the most sacred hope: for me to live
a life of safety and of joy, a life of the purpose we so vehemently
believed in. I stood there for a long while, unnoticed by her. When
she finally turned around, she knew without words why I wept. She
came to me and spoke with the Filipina accent that housed the
struggle I would never understand but will always be unceasingly
grateful for. “You're welcome,” she breathed. She embraced me,
eyes brimming with tears, face covered with wetness.
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