a love language passed down

May 31

May 31 a love language passed down

Hi there! It’s been awhile! I hope you’ve been doing well. A couple of semesters ago, I took a creative journalism class in college, and it was probably my favorite class I’ve taken in college so far. I wrote a piece on food and its connection to expressing love in my family, and I thought I’d share it with you. I’ve often found that food is so much more than just food. Food is connection. Food is a creative outlet. Food is memories. Food is joy. And I think those are some reasons why food is so important in my life. For my family members: I hope this piece brings back good memories.

I want to thank my mom, Esther Lem, for sharing so many of her experiences in our interviews. This piece wouldn’t have been nearly as good without you, mom.

I hope you enjoy! And if you’d like, please comment on how food has been important in you or your family’s life! I’d love to know.

A Love Language Passed Down

By Maya Wilson

When my maternal grandparents immigrated to Canada from China, my grandfather opened a diner in Toronto. It was your typical kind of neighborhood diner, except a bit more Chinese. It served Chinese American food, like egg rolls, chicken chow mein, and chop suey. But it also served American-American food, like hamburgers, grilled cheese, and milkshakes. When my mom was growing up, the big thing that high schoolers would order for lunch was french fries and gravy, also known as poutine. My mom liked to sit at the milkshake counter and order dishes like grilled cheese, french fries, and all the foods that she wouldn’t get to eat at home. Her older sisters would wait on the tables, and my mom dreamed about the day when she would get to be a server and wear those old white dresses with little aprons like her sisters did.

Cooking became my grandfather’s livelihood, but it also became a way for him to communicate to his family. My grandparents didn’t know a lot of English, and my mom and her five siblings didn’t know a lot of Cantonese. Along with this, my mom didn’t describe my grandparents as “very emotional or physical.” There weren’t a lot of “I love you’s” or hugs exchanged in the family, but there was a lot of food.

My mom told me that her dad used to make oatmeal for her and her siblings for breakfast. Every morning, they’d wake up to the smell of warm, sweet oatmeal that had been on the double boiler for hours. He would leave for work before she woke up, and she’d sleepily thump down the stairs to a pot of piping hot oatmeal sitting on the stove. After school, her dad would pick my mom and her siblings up from school in their family’s green Chevrolet. When they got home, he would only rest for a bit before cooking dinner for the family. Her favorite meal that he made was his stir fried char siu or chicken. At dinnertime, her whole family of eight would sit around a small dinner table that would normally seat four. There was never an empty seat at the table because dinner was an important meal in my mom’s family. Nobody was allowed to miss it.

My mom doesn’t remember her dad ever telling her that he loved her, but she knew through how he would always make sure she was well fed. She knew through the little cakes and cookies he’d bring back for her and her siblings. She knew through the soy sauce chicken wings he would buy for her family during their weekly trip to Chinatown. On their way home, her family would always stop at a nice beach on Lake Ontario to have a picnic. She and her siblings would eat their chicken wings and play on the swings.

My grandmother used food like it was prescription medication. When she noticed that my mom wasn’t sleeping well, she made her soup. When it was flu season, she made her soup. The soups were described by my mom as “disgusting.” She said that they were always made with something that had been dried for what seemed to be close to a hundred years. Her mother would rehydrate it in the fridge for weeks. She realized that sometimes the mysterious looking food rehydrating in her family’s fridge was bird’s nest. Other times it was seaweed. Other times it was dried shrimps that looked like a whole different creature when they were rehydrated. My mom would plug her nose and finish the bowl of soup in a few big gulps. Sometimes she’d pour them down the sink when her mom wasn’t looking. She feels bad about that now because she’s since found out that some of those ingredients were very expensive, and her mom probably had to sneak them in “on the black market or something.” But my grandmother has forever said that it was because of those soups that my mom grew tall and was able to fall asleep.

Food as a love language got passed down from my grandparents to my mother. I’ll always remember the delicious soups, curries, and tofu dishes that my mom made for me when I got home from school. They’d sit on the dinner table, still warm from being on the stove. I remember being amazed that kale could taste good after eating her kale salad with a sprinkle of parmesan, a dash of red onions, and a squeeze of lemon juice.

One of my favorite memories from growing up was spending weekend afternoons baking with my mom. We’d bake all sorts of things together, like lemon cupcakes with a lemon curd filling, homemade bread, and our favorite: mini apple pies. As we baked, we would playfully speak in overly dramatic Italian and French accents as I directed her on the next step of the recipe. I would designate myself as “chef” and she would be “sous chef.” She would do a lot of the measuring and cleaning while I would do all the mixing, scooping, and piping (all while licking each spatula clean). She would never complain about the mess I made. She would playfully ask me in her Italian accent what my culinary inspiration was as “a high profile chef,” and I would say that it was my mom. No matter what adolescent struggles I was going through at the time, they all seemed to fade to the background when I was baking in the kitchen with my mom.

Food has also been used to communicate difficult things that are hard to say. I remember when my mom baked lemon bars for me as an apology after an argument we had. She tried to feed me the words she didn’t yet know how to say out loud. She said it in a language that we could both understand.

And now, food has become both a passion of mine and a vehicle for care. I love to cook and try new recipes, teach cooking classes, discover new restaurants, learn about food, and I’ve even self-designed a major in food studies. But one of my favorite things will always be making food with the people I love and for the people I love.

Every year on my mom’s birthday, I like to make her a banana cake with chocolate cream cheese frosting because I remember her saying that it was one of her favorite cakes that I’ve made. I love seeing the warm delight on my mom’s face when I carefully place the cake topped with lit up candles in front of her. Whether I’m trying to express my gratitude, want to say that I’m thinking of someone, or communicating that I care for someone, I often find myself in the kitchen whipping something up. That’s probably one reason why I’ve become known for being “the food person” among my family and friends. I’m happy to be known for that.

My love for food started with those afternoons baking with my mom. Maybe the part of me that holds nostalgia always wants to be there in the kitchen with my mom, mixing away and goofing around. Maybe a part of me is transported there whenever I’m in the kitchen. Maybe that’s why I come back to it.