Category: Family Meal

I love Thanksgiving with my family.  It's always several days of two for one meals: you can fill your first plate with turkey, stuffing, taters and gravy, and green bean casserole; then you can fill your second plate with rice, grilled citrus tri-tip with garlic chili sauce, crisp veggies, spicy nam prik and som tam. 

This Thanksgiving, my extended family (cousins Atita, Sirion, Sakorn, Lynda, their mom, Lynda's common-law partner Steve, Atita's long-time boyfriend Aaron; my uncle's in Thailand) and my immediate family (brother Danny, his long-time girlfriend Miho, Mae & Pau) managed to all get together for Thanksgiving for the first time in about ten years.  With all of us scattered in NYC, L.A., and the Bay Area, it's getting harder to match coordinates. 

My family time is becoming more precious to me as I approach 30.  I've been feeling this phase shift, both physical and emotional.  When I was in Sarajevo with the Charming Hos, Cynthia and Jewlia asked me my age.  When I said 28, they said, "Uh-oh, Saturn return.  Good luck with that, baby."  Apparently, all the stars are aligned as they were the year I was born.  Supposedly, it is a difficult year, a year of overcoming obstacles.

Aaron, my cousin Atita's boyfriend, also turned 28 recently.  His Saturn return coincides with a return to active duty with the National Guard.  Very soon, he'll be leaving for Afghanistan, where he'll work as a Specialist for 18 months.  We didn't do Thanksgiving together this year because of Aaron, but it was definitely on our minds when we made the decision to get our shit together and make it happen.

With the exception of my otherwise totally lovable Republican Pau (who, thankfully, has never voted), everyone in my family is a pacifist Democrat.  I think that for many college-educated urbanites, war is an argument over cocktails, a Krugman column, a speech from a mic-encrusted podium.  Until now, I'm a little ashamed to admit that I have been happy to include myself in the theoretical debate, and to exclude myself from knowledge of its practical application.

Yet here we are, the extended family of another American soldier, sending off our adopted son/brother/lover to war just before Christmas.  I'm scared for him. We all are.  I'll be sending care packages (no beef jerky, Aaron says they get tons of the stuff).  I'm sure I'll be compulsively reading all news related to Afghanistan for the next year and a half.  But my news watch will go beyond the Sunday morning hot air and party lines and net screeds.  The stories will be points on a map tracking Aaron's dotted line until it finally returns home to L.A.

Families are random. New York harbors a lot of estranged orphans, people who can't get along with their families, who've escaped their stifling towns to find fellow exiles.  It was only after hearing so many of their stories that I realized how lucky I was to draw the long straw with my family.  We are a mixed bag, but the love is fierce.

By luck of the love draw (the least predictable roulette of all), my uncle married three times, fathering four girls and a boy who reached into the grab bag of features and came up with five distinctly different combinations.  A roll of the dice and a desire to stay in this country brought two bell-bottomed sweeties together, bearing two pups who sipped deeply from my father's paler Chinese gene pool.  Fate brought my cousin Lynda companionship in the form of a dimpled, curl-topped bass player.  A Japanese woman knows how to tease smiles out of my once stoic brother.  And now, a 6'4", outspoken, loyal soldier is a part of our family.

I love my unwieldy potluck of a family.  My cousins and my brother have brought great new additions to our family table.  I hope that one day I can bring someone to the dinner table  who's worthy of their company.

[November 2003.  My uncle's cement house behind the province jail in the Northeast region of Thailand.  My AUNT, my cutie-pie, America-fascinated 14 year-old cousin FON and I are sitting on the floor of the main room.  Translated from Thai.]

AUNT: [examining me, clucking] How does a person get to be so fat?

FON: Mae!  She's not fat!  She's just American! [Turning to me] Right?  You're normal in America, right?

ME: [laughing] Yeah, I guess you're right.

[Phone conversation with my Pau.  We are discussing his brother/my uncle's recent double bypass surgery.]

PAU: You know what they do in the open heart surgery?  They open up the chess bones, you know, what you call?

ME: The sternum?

PAU: No, not the sternum...it's the see'krong.  You know what a see'krong is?  It's a...sparerib!  They cut open the sparerib.

ME:  Pau, they're called RIBS in people.

These are installation pieces done by my father in La Puente from 1994-present. The objects are found pieces in their natural habitats.  The collection is called:

T H A I G L I S H


Mushroom Piece, Pau's pantry. Date unknown.  Mixed media: plastic, dried Chinese mushrooms, paper, scotch tape, red sharpie. 
English translation: DO NOT THROW IN THE TRASH. LEAVE ME ALONE

Garage Door Opener Piece, car.  Date unknown.  Mixed media: plastic, post-it, scotch-tape, ball-point pen.
English message: PRESS LIGHTLY & HOLD

English translation of Thai message: DO NOT PRESS DOWN DEEPLY. PRESS LIGHTLY & HOLD

Bad Hinge Piece, Mini-storage, previously bedroom.  Date unknown.  Mixed media: enameled metal, masking tape, black sharpie.
Sign says in English: DO NOT OPEN THIS SIDE BAD HINGE
Missing and/or presumed stolen from the original work was another piece of masking tape underneath this one which had the same message in Thai.

Frittata Piece, kitchen table.  July 3, 2005.  Mixed media: eggs, shiitake mushrooms, ham, onion, peppers, oil, corelle plate.
subtitle of this piece: I don't need words to say I love you and I'm glad you're home

Card Piece, Pau's pantry.  Some time in the 1980s.  Mixed media: paper, photo, Crayola markers.
subtitle of this piece: "Chinese people don't hug"

Wednesday morning, 8:30 AM Brooklyn time, 5:30 AM La Puente time

(Recorded sound of a horse neighing as though rearing up from fear)

Me: (Picking up cell phone) Hello?

Pau: Hi luk.

Me: Hi Pau.

Pau: Don't worry.  Nothing is wrong.  Everything is okay. 

Me: Okay.

Pau: I sent you a book.

Me: Oh yeah, I got the cookbook, it's great.  Thanks, Pau.  I was going to call you today.

Pau: Oh okay.  (pause)  Because you know, that thing cost maybe ten bucks, but it cost me nine bucks to send that thing.

Me:  Thanks Pau, it's great, it's perfect.

Pau: You see, it has the Thai and the English.  Now you know what a yee-rah is.

Me:  Yeah, I saw.

Pau:   The yee-rah is the cumin, you got it?

Me:  Yeah, I saw, it's great.

Pau: So now, you got a question, you don't have to call me, right?

Me:  I might call you anyway, Pau.

Pau: Okay.  Cause that thing cost me eight bucks just to send it.

Me:  Yeah, thanks Pau.  It's great.

Pau:  So what you doing today.  You going to work?

Me:  Yeah, I'm leaving the house right now.

Pau:  Okay...okay.

Me: (pause) Okay.  I'll talk to you later then.

Pau:  Okay.  Bye luk.

Me:  Bye Pau.

My dad is cool.  Usually my mom did the evening dinners, unfailing brown and green over rice.  My brother's favorite thing my mom made was something I had named "very own food": ground beef cooked with peas, scallions, and a little fish sauce.  Sounds a little strange, but it's quite delicious over rice.

But it was my dad who did the more adventurous cooking.  He had been a waiter at a Sheraton when he was putting himself through business school.  He loves to tell me that despite the fact that he grew up engulfed by the supremely stinky scents of fish sauce, fermented shrimp paste, and all manner of stewing blood and guts, he'd never smelled anything as offensively putrid as blue cheese.

My dad could recreate anything we saw the other kids eating, with his own Thai-Chinese/lowbrow twist.  He would make thick bolognese sauce, finished with a little fish sauce (which is not so weird considering that fish sauce is just salty anchovy extract).  He would make the heaviest, chunkiest lasagna ever, substituting cottage cheese for ricotta (which I preferred) and making a sauce so thick with meats you could practically carve it -- it was chock full of pepperoni, smoky cocktail sausages, and ground hamburger and it was absolutely divine to us kids.  If we clamored for McDonald's breakfast, he would toast some english muffins, fry up some thick slices of ham, and then he would make a round mold of tin foil which he placed in the frying pan so that when he dropped the egg in the middle of it, it would fry up as a beautiful perfect circle, just like they did it at McD's. 

I think it was my father who taught me that food is a way that you can show your love, even if you're not able to express it verbally.  Once, when I was quite young, he made me an omelet with slices of American cheese melted on top.  I was completely blown away, and I told him it was the best thing I'd ever eaten.  Every morning, for the next six weeks, he made me a sunny yellow 4 egg cheese omelet until I finally made a gentle request for something different.

Passion for food and late nights is something that I share with him.  My mother and brother were early-to-bed, early-to-rise types, so I stayed up past my bedtime with my dad.  We'd watch late night HBO until the racier stuff came on, at which point he'd change the channel to National Geographic.  While we watched stories about deadly spiders or Fiji sea coral, we sat in silence and folded wontons together, sharing a bowl of ground pork mixture and cold wonton wrappers and throwing our winged dumplings into a container dusted with rice flour.  My father would be up early the next morning preparing a broth for our breakfast of wonton soup with the ubiquitous peas my brother and I loved, sliced scallions and thin, sweet tiles of roast pork.

A couple of years ago, when I went to visit, my father was waiting at the car while my mother had come to gather me from the baggage claim area.  I put my arms around him and gave him a one-sided, awkward hug, to which he gruffly responded, "Chinese people don't hug."   But when we arrived home, the refrigerator was full of ingredients for all of my favorite dishes -- my dad's incredible steak and vegetable soup, chicken with longan, Chinese yam and red currants, and of course, his signature Beef Delight -- fatty tri-tip marinated in a secret citrus-ginger-soy blend, barbecued to medium rare (and then reheated in the oven to a nice opaque well done by my squeamish mom), served with a piquant raw garlic-serrano chili salsa.

He's the model of the stoic Asian dad, reticent with praise and affection, and eager to share his expertise with any listening party.  He's especially fanatic about knives -- when my mom and I went shopping for clothes at the mall, we knew when we were done that we could always find my brother at the Tilt at the Hill Arcade, and we could always find my father at the Advance Cutlery shop.  He was always adamant about the importance of a good, sharp knife, and I still carry that cutlery snobbery with me.  He sharpens and straightens his blades frequently and vigorously, steel swishing against steel with a speed and precision I've never seen anyone else match.  And he always has an extra knife or two lying around, in case anyone should come by the house and mention their need for a good knife; of course, the recipient would always have to give him a penny in nominal payment to counteract the Thai superstition that any knife given away for free would cut its new owner.

He doesn't cook as often these days without the kids around to appreciate and snort down his handiwork.  About a year ago around the holidays, I went to visit and told him I would cook.  I prepared a beautiful chicken from the Chinese market with lemons and herb butter.  He took a bite and chewed thoughtfully.  "This is juicy," he said carefully.  "Hey, this is not bad."  He smiled.  "I'm surprised.  Where did you learn to do that?"  he asked.  Maybe I learned the technique of rubbing butter under the skin in a book, maybe I learned to squeeze the lemon in the cavity of the chicken from watching a cooking show.  But the beating heart of my cooking, cooking as an expression of my love -- that was your silent gift to your only daughter, and it's more valuable than all the recipes, all the equipment, all the ingredients in the world.