Invite Magazine

My mother, who left Vietnam at 15, doesn’t remember much about learning how to cook when she was younger. She grew up in a country where day-to-day living was difficult enough without trying to make everything fancy. Birthday parties were assembled with jump rope, hopscotch and sweet syrupy desserts (cake was for city people). Her fondest memories are like mine: cooking with family and friends. Those were her family gathering highlights.

My mother still recalls a remembrance party for her grandparents, an anniversary party of their deaths. She remembers the talking bird at the front, the bamboo trees around them. She wanted to help out—"I would do anything"—but at 12, she was relegated to washing vegetables, getting firewood for the stove and water for the well. Thirty or more people were there. Often these gatherings were the only times family would see each other for the year. Some of the dishes her cousins prepared are among her favorites: chicken with lotus bamboo, wine and raisins; glass noodles with chicken, carrots, celery and shredded crab; and syrupy desserts with sweet rice powder, coconut, peanuts and brown sugar. She has never made these dishes herself.

"You guys don’t really care for it," she tells me. But I’d never even tried these dishes. Why hasn’t she made them for us, I ask.

"It’s a lot of work." But she makes other difficult dishes.
And then she comes clean: She doesn’t really know how to make them.

With my mother’s much warmer disposition, I created a meal that my friends still remember. They even ask me to make it again. Even though she couldn’t see me cooking (the only way we were able to get through that call) I knew she was there, encouraging me. Except for the thick meat (delis in Chicago won’t slice raw meat like they will in California), the meal came out perfectly—just how I wanted.

My mother acknowledges we didn’t have the easiest time in the kitchen. "You know what?" she said the other day. "Mommy was impatient and I forgot I have been doing it for a long time. And you’re a beginner and I expect you to make it perfect like me and how can that be possible? Mommy’s sorry, honey. That’s my fault, for being impatient and a perfectionist with a beginner. You have to learn how to walk before you can run. And I expected you to run.

Come on now, you can run! Of course, I didn’t think about it when you were cooking. Are you still mad at Mommy?" How can I be mad at someone who didn’t teach me how to cook, make me do any chores because she wanted me to focus on school?

"After I hung up the phone, I was still smiling for a long time. You were so cute! My baby lives so far away and she doesn’t have any Vietnamese friends and you were going to do this dish. I remember your friends liked it a lot," my mom says. "You’ve survived all these years. You’re so cute."

"Survived? Yes, cute’s the word," I say. "What about other times? What do you remember about teaching us how to cook?"

"What I remember most is trying to teach you guys everyday simple dishes and you didn’t seem too interested and now you call and say, ‘Mommy, how do you cook that?’ It’s so cute, honey. It makes mommy feel needed."

I laugh. "Is that all it takes?"

"That’s all it takes for Mommy to feel brilliant."

We talk for a little more, "princess," "monkey" and "I love you" appearing every few sentences, and then we hang up. No crying, no fighting and my mother feels brilliant.

I’ll be taking cooking lessons from now on.