This Is My Brain in Love - I. W. Gregorio Page 0,33
dare to fete a potential suitor with instant noodles, even if they were spruced up with yam, carrot, and egg. “How does she expect to catch a husband by cooking indomie? Only by the grace of God.”
To which my father simply gives a rumpled shrug and a nostalgic smile. He grew up eating some variation of spaghetti with red sauce four days of the week with fish on Fridays. The indomie was a hit: “A pasta by any other name tastes as sweet.”
The only thing sweeter is the kiss that my father lays on my mother’s forehead whenever he tells the story. Their tenderness always sets off a lightning-quick pang in my chest, as if my body is processing the briefest panic that my father could’ve judged my mother by the dinner she served him. There are so many things that need to fall in place for two people to get together, and even more things that need to happen for them to stay together.
I know that you can’t go through life like that, imagining your life stretching ahead of you as a series of missed connections. I know that with so many billions of people in the world, chances are there’s someone out there who wouldn’t mind hanging out with me and maybe making out a bit. And I know that even if I don’t find “the one”—if there’s even such a thing—it’s still possible to live a fulfilling and happy life.
That’s always been my problem. Knowing something is going to be fine doesn’t ever stop my body from acting like things might turn out badly anyway. So it’s not my fault. I can’t help it: Each time I witness the force that still draws my parents to each other, I worry that the random sequence of events that leads to love will never happen to me.
This Is My Brain on Food Joy
JOCELYN
I send Priya my first draft of our screenplay the second I’m done with it. It’s the deal we’ve made: “You have so little faith in yourself that you’ll throw out anything that’s not one hundred percent perfect. Let me tell you the ninety percent that works so you can fix the ten percent that doesn’t.”
Within minutes she pings me back.
Got it. BTW, made some vids that I think you’ll like. I have a little more editing to do and then we can post them.
The link she sends to me is literally a sizzle reel, with close-up shots of onions bubbling in oil and of Jin-Jin doing a stir fry, the kind that leaves a film of grease over you when you’re done. She’s got a beautiful single shot of my amah making a dumpling, her quick fingers making it look like magic. There’s a sped-up action video of me panfrying the pot stickers where I look completely badass.
The best part, though, is a montage that she made of people’s reactions when they had the pot stickers. Priya’s videos are proof positive that eating my amah’s dumplings is a cross between a religious experience and a sex act.
There’s the burly middle-aged man who looks skeptical when his wife hands him a dumpling on a fork (heathens). His eyes are narrowed when he moves in for his bite, but the second his teeth sink in his eyes open in surprise before they close shut while he chews, as if he doesn’t want his other senses to interfere with his ability to savor the pot sticker.
There’s the twenty-something woman wearing NYU shorts who makes a beeline to our booth with her friends. “Pot stickers, yessssss! I get them all the time in the Village.”
“Really?” you can hear one of her friends saying in the background. “I don’t think you should trust a Utica dumpling any more than you trust a Utica bagel.”
NYU girl tears into the jiaozi despite the fact that they’re fresh from the pan and jumps up and down beckoning for a water bottle when it’s too hot. “Holy shit, these are awesome. Totally as good as Dumpling Kingdom.”
My favorite clip, though, is one of a toddler clutching a blue Observer-Dispatch balloon while her mom is hand-feeding her bits of chopped-up dumpling. The girl is putting them down like a champ—every few seconds she squeezes her fingertips together and moves her hands in and out until they bounce off each other in the baby sign for “more.” She looks like a little bird flapping its wings.