Eating with other families
Thinking about everyday feasts and reunions, surprising human connections, and the lives that happened before us.
However you found your way here, welcome! I’m Emily, and I write letters about how we seek and tell stories to make sense of a changing world and our place in it.
I meant to post this a while back, as it concerns events over Christmas—though it’s really more about the evergreen themes of life and love and family so where it sits in the chronology of the year doesn’t really matter. Because I write about W.C.’s family for the first time in it, I wanted, out of courtesy, to let them have a read before I shared it—to they don’t think I’m using their hospitality, their way of life, as writing fodder!—and it took a while before W.C.’s brother visited them again and was able to translate it for them in person.
I’m glad to say they didn’t feel the need to change a thing or to omit anything for privacy reasons (which I always try to be careful about), so here it is ❤️
Every day was oriented around the dining table, sumptuously draped with string beads and tiny red hearts. In the late morning, or whenever we woke up: a bread basket and pancakes with jars of homemade apple, quince, and plum jams for breakfast. Then lunch. Then tea or coffee with homemade cookies and Stollen, a German fruit bread. Someone would light the candles and get the fireplace going. Then dinner, and a nightcap. I felt thoroughly spoiled. That’s what you get when you go home to the parents for the holidays—W.C.’s this time, not mine. Many of us who are ethnically Chinese like to say how, for our emotionally constipated parents, the language of love is food, because it’s the easier way to say I love you. But really, we all know no culture has a monopoly on that.
The first time I met W.C.’s dad, he was in an apron, coming out to greet us at the door. Let’s call him Gospodin A., because I love that Bulgarian word (господин) for Mr., or Sir? He partakes equally in the cooking and baking with his Gospozha, the two of them busying side by side in the kitchen to make us Knödel with jackfruit drumsticks, buhtichki, red veggie curry rice, corn and zucchini fritters, scrambled tofu with mushrooms and peppers, nut roast with Brussel sprouts and potatoes, mushroom and bean soup—the recipes all neatly penned on lined note cards. I’m probably conflating what we were fed on our most recent visit and our previous visit, but there wasn’t a single dish I didn’t like. Visiting other people’s homes, it can sometimes be a minor source of anxiety for me when I feel unable to finish the food they offer me, either because I am genuinely too full or I don’t love the food—we all have our preferences, hey?—since I grew up with my mum grilling it into me that a good guest eats everything their host serves them. But at W.C.’s family home, I needn’t have worried. I licked every plate clean.