On dumplings, periods cramps & moms
I may not know how to define love, but surely it looks something like this.
I’m on day 1 of my period, and I’m craving dumplings. It’s not exactly the sorta buttery, deep-fried indulgence that I’d usually pine after, but I’m rolling with it. The hunt for unrefined sugar and junky carbs can come tomorrow.
To be clear, I’m craving a very specific kind of dumpling.
One wrapped in the doughy, textured flavors of childhood, filled to the brim with memories, intimate references and inside jokes. Paired with black vinegar and spoonsful of garlicky, crispy chili oil, there’s nothing quite like my mother’s homemade, crispy pan-fried pork and chive dumplings to invoke a personal reckoning with my past.
But alas, instead of placating my craving, I am in a begrudging standoff with a bowl of brown, bitter, Chinese herbal soup that’s, “good for period cramps,” my mother says. I swirl the dark broth and watch as the red dates, goji berries, and slices of ginger surface and torpedo into a vortex of jeering derision. “Eat me, eat me,” it taunts.
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I’m picking out the slices of ginger from my soup now, trying to guilt my unyielding mother into making the damn dumplings by imputing my aching uterus when she cuts me off with an off-handed, “Eat the ginger. It’s good for your stomach.”
Yup, this was Mom. Ginger, goji berries, dried red dates, angelica root, dried seahorses — these were her love languages.
From period cramps and acne to indigestion and asthma, my mom had an Asian soup for every ailment. She expressed her love, not through words of comfort and constant verbal affirmation, but by simmering pork bones and methodically brewing a personalized array of Chinese herbs and roots for you.
I down the last of the bitter, cloudy broth and retreat back to my room, tongue numb, back hunched, and belly bloated. I sink into bed and will my eyes to close.
And so it begins, my pre-nap analysis.
Love, huh?
My earliest memory of love was seeing Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet on the big screen, entangled in a burning, passionate display of fervor, insatiability, and ultimately, tragedy.
These days, having moved back home, nourished and pampered by domestic maternal bliss, my definition of love has changed to something a lot softer and quieter. Into something more airy and tender, something that perches on your soul, light as a feather as Emily Dickinson once said.
Something like fresh towels, clean sheets, and a stocked fridge. Like shared laughter around a warm dinner table.
I suppose it’s a little more than that, though.
“Are you sleeping?” I hear my mom call out from the kitchen.
I grumble back an incoherent murmur and hear the shuffling of feet come in, hear the fumbling of wires and chargers thump in the background, the sound of the window being cracked open, and the low buzz of the fan start to hum.
All of a sudden, my belly is warm, warm, warm.
I crack open one eye and see a heating pad resting squarely on my stomach.
Hmmm, that’s more like it.
I may not know how to define love, but surely it looks something like this.
Like someone who will drop the green onions that she’s chopping, leave the boiling water that’s seconds from overflowing, to quietly tuck a heating pad under my blankets. Setting fixed on high.
Like someone who makes sure to crack open the window and turn on the fan, not because the room is warm but because she remembers that I sleep better with the low whirring of ambient noise, that the lilting tune of bird chirps and wind gusts and fan drones make the best lullaby.
Like someone who makes the choice to forget the snarky comeback that I snapped last night, the eye rolls to her soliloquies on why I shouldn’t drink so many iced drinks — “This is why you always have cramps!” she scolds.
Surely, it looks something like this.
In the peripheries of my mind, I hear her softly make her way back to the kitchen, hear her lower the volume of the video she’s watching and quiet her singing to a low hum.
I’m in a state of sleepy delirium now. Time has slowed to a trickle, and I am lulled by the faint, steady rhythm of chopping and the breezy coolness of spring across my cheek.
I dream that there are two storms approaching from the East and the West at the exact same time, like pincers. Lightning on all sides. I’m adrift in water, swimming without effort in a clear green river, watching the scene unfold and being buoyantly carried downstream with the flow, when all of a sudden, the creaking of the door rouses me awake.
Her footsteps are so quiet that I barely hear her come in, but the presence of movement stirs me.
She whispers, “Look what I have,” and I roll to my side and stretch out the sleep and see that it’s a plate of pan-fried dumplings, steaming, golden and crisp around the edges, just the way I like it.
“I added some ginger in it. Does your stomach feel better?” she asks.
I look at what she has for me, and it’s just a plate of pan-fried dumplings. But at the same time, it isn’t.
It is love.
