It's me!
I factory reset my phone 2 weeks ago. It alerted me that it would stop working as a phone should if I didn’t. I made all the necessary saves and uploaded all the selfies I didn’t want to lose. I made sure my WhatsApp was backed up so I would never lose the few messages my dad sent me since I got this phone and he got WhatsApp. That’s all I cared about, really.
…
I recently wrote a personal essay/review of Priya Krishna’s new book Indian-ish – a book she wrote with her amazing mother Ritu. The article made it to the Everett Herald, a local newspaper here in Boring land. Oh sorry, I meant Boeing.
…
As I sit down at my desk to write you this note, it’s 11.21 AM here in the Pacific Northwest. The weather is mild for this time of the year, for summer and yet, the grass in the backyard is parched. From this brown and very dead meadow, hundreds and hundreds of dandelions (and creeping buttercups) are blooming as if to say, “beauty can come from anything”. Yes, they are a nuisance and a weed but ever since last year, they have become my friends. A metaphor for how fast life and seasons change. How everything – even when you cannot see it – holds beauty.
…
My memory has gotten so much better and so much worse with time. I attribute the latter with how much I use my phone. When I’m on it, I cannot piece together parts of a conversation I just had. I can’t complete my sentences and I genuinely feel lost until I put it down and yes, forget about it.
…
Catching an evening flight out of Seattle to Louis Armstrong International Airport in New Orleans seemed like a great idea when I was booking my tickets in March. I had the place in my mind, the time I wanted to go (May) and absolutely no idea what I wanted to do there except arrive at our destination. It would have been midnight and that didn’t seem to faze me. I was used to being in an unfamiliar city after dark and I figured New Orleans is all about late nights music shows in dark jazz clubs so someone would definitely be arriving along with us.
…
When I first started cooking for myself, I relied on the knowledge passed down to me by my great-great food blog search that I serendipitously stumbled upon on the internet. I was in America and I was bowled over how fast I was taken from a keyed in search word to a website, which wasn’t very fast at all. Compared to dial-up and Goa internet though it was a lightning bolt. (Strange how I take these things for granted in 2019)
…
I have been away from blogging for so long that each time I come back, WordPress has a new update. I click update and then most of the stuff comes up new and I need to learn everything again. This is not a complaint. I’m probably getting too slow for technology or rather, technology is as always, too much for my humanity!
…
Just like he chose a nice December day to be born in 1949, my father chose an equally beautiful day to die in December 2017. The last month of the last year of his life. The end of calendar years are when we’re all taking stock. Place visited, resolutions met, personal triumphs and possibilities for the next time we go around the sun.
…“I’m a good cook,” she types on the blank screen before her. The wheels of uncertainty start to turn in her head. “Is it conceited to write that about *MYSELF* on *MY* own blog?” she wonders to herself. It had been a year since she’d found her way back into the kitchen. The familiar movements with which she whipped up everything from eggs to 3-layer biryani were rusty. Her confidence wasn’t any better. But she had to write this promising essay to convince herself that all these years of painstakingly making recipes, photographing them and then typing them on a computer weren’t all an illusion.
“Sigh,” she sighed.
Last year was not a good year for her creative work. She spent a lot of time in existential surgery. Reeling from the death of her father of 30 years, Edlyn wasn’t sure if anything made sense anymore. “If I say this in a post, will people think I’m milking this grief thing?” she asked the other Edlyn in her head. “Yes, everybody dies. You’re not special. Move on,” other Edlyn said. “Okay.” Backspace, backspace, backspace.
It was true nonetheless. In her father, she saw unlimited inspiration. He was a marvel in the kitchen. He rarely had time to teach Edlyn (or any of the other sisters) recipes but she always dreamt of making it happen somehow. That way, she could surely be an even better cook. Edlyn did not cook like her father. Firmly in the clean-as-you-go camp, she recently realised more of her cooking was inspired by her mother. She got her crankiness from her dad instead.
His death was something she needed to sit with. “It’s not an excuse!” she cried. He was taken from the family very suddenly. The gloom descended without so much as a doctor’s visit. His death was there laying in front of her. She had no other way out other than accepting it.
Imagine tastebuds altering, lying on the bed with her mind buzzing, new food intolerances appearing out of nowhere, feet swelling, making trips to the doctor with this feeling that something was seriously wrong with her. “I’m so sorry I keep coming here. I feel like I’m losing my mind,” she told one of the 4 physicians she had seen. Edlyn could not peek into their computers but she imagined they were typing “hypochondriac” as she spoke of her toes turning black or that lump in her breast that appeared and stayed. She refused to put her family through another layer of grief on year one. “That’s why I keep coming here,” she cleared it up with the doctor just in case they thought she liked this attention.
They never diagnosed the swollen toes, the no sleep problem turned into a too much sleep problem and the lumps in the breast were fibroadenomas for which there is no treatment except follow up ultrasounds/mammograms when prompted by the hospital. She lived happily ever after with bat signal in the form of a mild burning sensation on the lump during ovulation. FUN.
Except.
She needed to remind herself that she could still do this thing. Last year some of Edlyn’s famous homecooking came with pre-seasoning packets and concept clean-as-you-go was more like pile dishes high into one side of the sink and then move it to the other side when she wanted to fill the water filter. Considering these circumstances, why would she ever want to photograph a food blog post again? For fun?! People were terrible and her father was dead.
It had been a year though so she wanted to try. If not in the same way, then at least in a way that would honour her father’s memory and the way in which it painted how she conducted herself in the kitchen. Also, her ma LOVED her blog from the very beginning. She missed that connection they both shared. It had been hard to write about her feelings. She was worried she would hurt her family further by bringing up her dad. Nothing could be further from the truth.
“Baby steps,” she typed, “I am a good cook, but I need to remember why.” She was a product of two people who made eating a pleasure and writing and showing them they were an inspiration was a reason why this felt right. It can feel that way again, she thought.
