Have you read this book, "For One More Day"? It is one of Mitch Albom's best sellers. I bought it several years ago and I read it again this week coz... I felt like it. Don't ask me why, but I love to reread some books again and again. Go read this book if you fancy some good old weep.
Anyway, a few lines caught my attention and it went like this.
"It was as delicious as it was familiar. I don't know what it is about food your mother makes for you, especially when it's something that anyone can make-pancake, meat loaf, and tuna salad-but it carries a certain taste of memory."
How true is that.
I remember my mom used to cook this soup a lot when I was in primary years. The fish was quite smaller than the one I had today, which is a little trickier for my sister and I, at that age, to eat. Thus, she'd make sure she sit right next to us so nobody is choking on the fishbones. She never asked how my school stuff was going that day, but it didn't bothered me that much coz I have my father for that. Our conversations were always around the same talks; the neighbours, her side-income business, my father's office-politic issues, with some extra nagging in between. My mom is quite a talkative person and she really loves to talk. I'm totally the opposite though. I would only listen and reply to her, necessarily. Up to the point where I learned to pretend 'listening' to her. Idiot old self. Anyway, she always scooped us more rice, add some kuah to our plates and offer us more fish whenever our plates were nearly empty. Once done, she would asked us to help her clear the table and made sure we eat our dessert. Oh yes, dessert always comes in fruit form. No fancy wancy dessert back then.
And that was yesterday.
The lunch-'talk'-routine stopped once the boarding school life took over at 13. I didn't realised how much I missed it until yesterday. After I read that small excerpt. Which brought me to the soup. And the soup dragged my thoughts to her. On how she cares for me. Nobody cares about me like she did. Nobody has ever been so close to me like her. I should have been more grateful. I should have been ashamed on how I treat her in certain way, and how I'd turned my back on her a certain point of life.
Eating the soup made me fell back into being her daughter again. The same daughter who sat next to her during lunch decades ago. A matured one tho. I miss her. I can't want to go home next week and hug her. :)
*****
“You have one family, Charley. For good or bad. You have one family. You can’t trade them in. You can’t lie to them. You can’t run two at once, substituting back and forth.“Sticking with your family is what makes it a family.”
