then attempting to perfect the ratio of rice noodle to meat and vegetables. Today it’s coming up with different fillings for lumpia.
“Don’t forget that batch you made with ground beef and raisins,” I say after another bite. “That one was my favorite.”
She frowns. “I’m not sure everyone will like the raisins.”
“But that’s the recipe you and Auntie Nora came up with. She cooked it for Uncle Nigel on their third date, and that was when he said he knew she was the one for him—because he could eat her cooking forever, remember? Customers will love it too.”
“Maybe. But Uncle Nigel will eat anything,” Mom says with a wave of her hand.
Every time she whips up a batch of this lumpia, it always makes me miss them. If only we had the time—and money—to visit them in London.
I finish eating and begin packing the rest of the lumpia in a Tupperware container. When I start to put the unused lumpia wrappers back in the fridge, she stops me.
“Don’t. I’m going to make more.”
“Mom,” I groan and shove them in anyway.
Suddenly, I’m thirteen years old again and whining because she told me to go clean my room. But now I’m trying to convince her not to exhaust herself in the kitchen to no avail. We already spent two hours at the commercial kitchen this morning prepping food for today’s service, then put in eight hours at the food truck. It’s pushing almost ten at night, and she’s been on her feet all day.
I shouldn’t be surprised. She’s always been someone who needs to be doing something. She’s up at dawn most days, prepping for the day’s work. On her days off she power walks and does calisthenics in the living room before most people finish their coffee. Sitting on the couch relaxing is never an option for her. It was one of the things about her that drove my couch-lounging dad crazy. Still, though, she needs to rest.
Gently, I grab her arm and turn her to face me. “When has anyone ever complained about your lumpia? Every kind we’ve ever served sells out. The same thing will happen at the festival, I promise.”
She shrugs out of my grip. “You never know. Customers can get finicky.”
She pulls the package of wrappers back out of the fridge and sits at the kitchen table with a bowl of egg wash. When she starts dolloping meat mixture on the wrapper, I know I’ve lost this battle.
I take the seat across from her. She blinks slowly, a telltale sign that she’s tired. “Mom, look at me.”
She refuses, still studying her assembly line of ingredients.
“You can’t keep pushing yourself like this. It’s not good for you.”
The wrinkles in her forehead deepen. She still refuses to make eye contact with me. “Says who?” she mutters to the bowl of egg wash.
My stomach twists in a knot. That frustrated look, that annoyed tone. A fight is on the horizon, I just know it.
I rein in a frustrated sigh. “Says me. And your doctor. Remember what he said? How important it is for you to relax and de-stress, especially when you’ve been on your feet for hours and hours? You can’t be keeping up this work pace.”
“Did you hear that?” she hollers.
Her eyes are still on her hands, but I know exactly who she’s talking to.
“Our daughter thinks she knows better than me, Harold.” She shakes her head. The small gesture is as dismissive as it is disappointing. “How crazy, right?”
Most people would think it’s weird that she regularly chats to the urn containing Dad’s ashes, which sits on a shelf nearby in the living room, but I don’t. She’s been doing it since we lost him. It makes total sense to me. She does it because she misses him more than anything and it’s her way of maintaining their connection.
Her hands move quickly, her dark, crepe-like skin stretching every time she rolls lumpia. She’s knocking them out at a dizzying pace, faster than any machine could. She shakes her head and her eyebrows knit deeper.
“Mom.” I take a centering breath before I continue. “If Dad were here, he would tell you the same thing. He was just as excited about the food truck as you were, but he was a stickler on not working yourself to the bone. You know that.”
Memories of Dad hugging her from behind during one of her hours-long cooking or cleaning sessions in the kitchen filter through my mind. He would give her a gentle squeeze,