A Dance by Anna Yan

A Dance

Anna Yan

Sharing a meal has never been a means to an end for my mom and me. When we eat, it’s an experience, and everything else is just background noise. In the way parents do when they reminisce, my mom passes down memories of when I was just a baby and all we had was each other and food. When I was just starting to learn how to speak, I stood up on the seat next to her, wrapped my little arm around her shoulder, and told her in a mix of English and Mandarin, “Momma, I really like your food.” Even as a baby, I knew how powerful my mom’s cooking was.

My mom moves in the kitchen like a dancer, her movements rehearsed and perfected only by years of practice. While ballerinas might spend hours in the studio making fouettés, my mom spends just as much time in the kitchen making green onion pancakes, sauerkraut and pork stew, dumplings, noodles... She tells me sometimes about how she used to spend holidays making these dishes with her entire family. Now, she’s the only family member on this continent and the only one in our home who knows how to cook this way.

My mom taught me the basics of cooking in elementary school by showing me how to make things like scrambled eggs and noodles, in case I got hungry before she came home from work. During those afternoons after school, I’d practice my own dance. I’d stand near the stove, holding my hand over the pan. When it was warm enough, I’d slowly drizzle oil into the pan and swirl it around like I always saw her do. Then, I’d throw in my vegetables, jumping when the oil began its own dance.

Last year, I moved into my own apartment where I didn’t have the dining halls to sustain me, and I felt this longing for my mother’s food. It became worse when the pandemic hit and I couldn’t go home. While I’d found my way around the kitchen, making my rendition of mac and cheese and roasted vegetables, I felt homesick for all the foods I’d spent months without. I’d have a glimpse of mental images of the dinners my mom and I shared, and I’d find myself calling her and asking her how to make green onion pancakes or cold noodles. Of course, the food was never quite the same as my mom’s.

I’m not sure what my relationship with my mom would be like if we didn’t have the common ground of food. On the worst days, when I revert back to all of the poor mechanisms of communication I thought I’d left behind at eighteen, I know she still loves me when she gives the best pieces of meat at dinner. I’ve been lucky in the fact that my mom has never shied away from telling me she cares about me, but sometimes I know the easiest way she’s found to tell me is through her cooking. Like she says, other people cook with their hands. She cooks with her heart. 13