On HuffPost, where Andrew Lam also posts, this photo (unidentified on both New America Media and Nation of Change postings, is captioned: "Lunch at my uncle's home in Saigon in 1972. I'm in my mother's arms."by KenBelieve me, I'm not angling for the DWT dementia beat, but it beats writing about such self-created mental dysfunctionals as Rafael "Ted from Alberta" Cruz (and his worse-than-McCarthy list of Obama "crimes" -- see Dana Milbank's masterful "Ted Cruz, the reckless accuser"); or that "noisome arrogant little man" George Will, ridiculing the First Lady's public voicing of concern for the kidnapped Nigerians ("Is there anyone on the planet who is a bigger ass in a wig than George Will?"); or Gov. Kris "NJ Fats" KrispyKreme, whose lies are now so all-consuming and laid on so thick that you wonder if he's begun to believe some of his fables; or 15-minutes-of-fame sociopath Cliven Bundy, whose "Thugs Suddenly Deny They Pointed Weapons at Federal Agents (LMFAO)."No, these people have all, in their own ways, chosen to deform and/or disable their brains into tangled contraptions incapable of taking in and honestly processing information. It's almost a relief to turn to people who can't help themselves. For people who've had a close encounter with dementia (which, as I noted in writing a couple of weeks ago about Michael Kinsley's remarkable April 28 New Yorker "personal history" piece, "Have You Lost Your Mind?: More bad news for boomers," is more and more of us) or who think about being engulfed by what Kinsley called "the tsunami of dementia that is about to swamp us" (which is also more and more of us), the subject exerts a mighty, sometimes irresistible pull.Now Andrew Lam, the Vietnamese-born essayist and short-story writer who deals frequently with Asian-American issues, which often involves writing about food, has given us a powerful piece called "Talking About the Past, and Cooking, With Mother, originally published on New America Media, where Andrew is an editor as well as frequent contributor, and reprinted on Nation of Change, where I encountered it. (There's also a Vietnamese version posted.)Possibly you can resist continuing to read a piece that begins:
"Why don't you call me anymore?" she asks on the phone, her voice plaintive, barely above a whisper. "No one remembers me, no one cares if I die." "Mother, I called 3 days ago." "Liar! That never happened."It happened. She just no longer can recall.
It's possible, as I say, that you can resist reading more. And if you can, more power to you. I couldn't. Andrew goes on to explain:
Five years ago, my mother, who is now 81, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, and her short-term memories are now almost non-existent. Unless something very dramatic—death, divorce, accidents, a marriage—happens to those very dear to her she retains nothing of the immediate past. She has, too, become paranoid and housebound. The once vivacious, outgoing and beautiful woman has become frail and depressed. Though my two older siblings and I visit my parents in Fremont practically every week, as we all live in the Bay Area, my mother nevertheless feels isolated and confused due to her increasing dementia.But when it comes to the distant past, and especially when it involves cooking, it is another story altogether.
Andrew recalls being on the phone with her and changing the subject, asking her, "How do you make banh tom co ngu?" ("a Vietnamese fried shrimp cake made with yam").
"Well," she responds with no hesitation, "you need both rice powder and starch. You need to make sure it's of equal part and the shrimp you keep the head, that's the best part. You need to have good, light oil." She rattles off the recipe with increasing confidence. "Be careful, if you use too much starch, it doesn't get crunchy."I already know how to make banh tom co ngu. In fact, I learned dozens of dishes from her by simply watching or listening and occasionally assisting her in the kitchen over the years. I asked because I simply wanted to hear her talk with confidence, to have her in her element, and not in her self-pitying voice when that dominates her outlook in old age -- a mother abandoned.
Andrew fills us in on the life his mother has led, going back to her earlier married years as the wife of a high-ranking South Vietnamese general. Although she began cooking without formal training, she cooked so much, and for so many distinguished gatherings, and with so much later opportunity to avail herself of the finest professional instruction, that cooking is apparently burned into her."It is a sad thing therefore," he writes, "to see her so frail and forgetful and depressed, and no longer capable of cooking. She can barely make rice and heat soup."And then he remembers a day.
"I don't know what happened," she said one day when I came to visit and wanted to cook for my parents. "Someone stole all my knives."I kept searching and finally found three knives hidden under the sofa cushions. It was depressing: her fear of robbers and thieves is overwhelming her, to the point where she feels the need to defend herself with the knives she once used to create such fabulous, sumptuous meals. Still, for the appetizer, I make the classic Vietnamese spring roll. I mix pork with fish sauce, black pepper, crabmeat, green onion, and vermicelli. I bring out rice papers and warm water. “Let me help,” she says. She gets up from the sofa where she often lays, listless, watching Korean soap operas. Though she could never cook an entire meal again, she is her old self as she works. The bony fingers are guided by muscle memory. And as she rolls her spring rolls -- a scoop of mixed ground pork with crabmeat, a wet rice paper -- she begins to remember. “Back when we were in Hue, I remember making dinner for 25 guests,” she says. “Mrs. Ngoc, she would send her daughters. My gosh, that woman had six of them. And they all worked so hard.” Mother starts laughing. She remembers the women crowding her kitchen. How they gossiped as they worked. One young woman had a great voice and often sang. They shared recipes. She remembers a gentle world long gone.I encourage her. I give her more rice papers. And we roll cha gio together. We make more than we could possibly eat. But it doesn’t matter. We roll back the clock. We talk about food, cooking. We talk about the past.
