I had Vietnamese pho today for lunch. And wine.
Enviously watching Vietnamese women elegantly eating the soup with chopsticks and a spoon while animatedly arguing about something.
I eat it western-style, like a pasta dish and with a fork. Still it splatters everywhere. And there was wine. Which always makes me want more wine.
Now I am settled on the couch with the vague hint of chilli and cinnamon on my breath.
Terminally tired. From what I don’t know.
I have things to do. THINGS.
I’m feeling a little melancholy if I allow it. Which I don’t, for the most part.
I made rempeyek the other day, a childhood favourite that was only available when my mother made it. And then when a sweet boy full of sunshine made it for me and reminded me how it tasted.
My mother never wrote the recipe down anywhere. Or not that I’ve found anyway. So it doesn’t feel like ‘my mother’s’ particularly. It was hers, but not hers, if you know what I mean.
Then my sister and I made my mother’s frikadel, her Dutch-Indonesian-personalised meatball recipe scratched out in her scrawly writing in one of those old-school notebooks. Hard to read, with crossing out and bits added as she refined it.
It was a staple in our house, nothing special. Which is how it works isn’t it?
Those splinters of normal everyday life that make their home gently under your nails after they are gone. They get a shove into the quick when you least expect it, a shock of pain that you never saw coming, always it’s unexpected.
I made it again on my own later. I don’t really like to cook, but it’s simple. I thought it might take the sadness out of it. But no, it’s still there. Not heavy, but it lingers after the sharpness.
So I am a little drunk and melancholy and now I will find something to binge-watch and forget about it.
Had I a boy he would not have to do much to help: Bring me water, sit close by me on the floor and offer some warm bare skin to pet gently.
12 comments
Drink more is my advice! And I’m a doctor*
Coug
*Caveat by Doctor I mean I have a bag which contains items of a medical nature
*laugh* Thank you ‘doctor’.
Medical advice off the internet is the best kind…
Ferns
(Hugs)
I know this feeling in my own version all too well.
xx
*hugs back* Thank you.
Ferns
“…Those splinters of normal everyday life that make their home gently under your nails after they are gone…” The lilt of your prose always makes me a little drunk – and with this post you make my mouth water for the rempeyek of yesteryear while longing to be that boy in some universe at your feet.
Thank you so much for the lovely words. I appreciate it.
Ferns
I hope you find something good to bingewatch.
Also your nails look lovely.
Charlie
I’m watching Designated Survivor at the moment. It started off strong and then got stupid(er) as it went on.
And thank you for the compliment: I posted a clearer photo of my nails on the twitter :).
Ferns
A beautiful post. I don’t quite like it; I feel it though. Yes, definitely take the doctor’s advice.
“Had I a boy he would not have to do much to help: Bring me water, sit close by me on the floor and offer some warm bare skin to pet gently.” I keep coming back to this. So much yes. And hooray for the boys who understand it.
Ferns – this was beautiful, and poignant.
I was sitting at the airport in Chicago yesterday, getting ready for my second flight home. In fact sitting wasn’t true, there were no seats as I was getting ready to go through security and doing the “stuffing everything from my pocketses into my backpack”, so I was kneeling on the concourse, out the way of everyone.
Scarlett IM’ed me and asked if I’d seen this post. I hadn’t yet, so she sent me that one bit.
What could have been a melancholy moment for me turned into one of just… remembering the rightness of this, this is what home feels like. This is where home is.
I hope its ok posting a link here, but that last line touched me so much, I had to write about it.
https://fetlife.com/users/21183/posts/4915238