The Ninth Flavor

Savoring the memories here, translated…

Although my mother has Asian ancestry, she was still born and raised in Jakarta, Indonesia, and, naturally, the eating habits she had, was totally, different from my father who’s from Sandong, China, and this made our supper tables filled with a ton of varieties.

In my memories, at supper, there was, a mixture of an assortments of scents and dialects, my father’s Sandong dialect, my mother’s Indonesian, mixed in with Mandarin and Taiwanese, Uncle Chen’s dialect from Jiejiang, my older brother and my childish words, it’d made us into a full circle, we’d, talked of the world. My father, Uncle Chen always questioned the three of us, mother and sons, “Why do you need to put soup in your rice, instead of just have the rice and eat it?”, this was influenced by my mother. The soups of Southeast Asia was different form the soups in the Chinese culture—the soups in Southeast Asia are to go with the rice, like Soto Ayam (Indonesian Chicken Soup), or Tom Yum (Hot and sour soup with shrimp), etc., etc., etc. all the tastes are salty, sour and spicy, not fitted, to be drunk on their own; the soups in Chinese culture are more bland, and mostly, drank separately from the meals.

illustration from the papers online…

Another clear difference in diet was, I’d started using the chopsticks late. It wasn’t until my second grade year when I’d had a couple of full days in school, did I start using chopsticks frequently, and, it took me awhile, to learn how. AT home, the chopsticks had that “adultness” assigned, it was what my father, Uncle Chen needed when they ate, my mother, my older brothers, and I had a spoon in our right hands, and forks in our left, how the Southeast Asians are about to, start their meals.

My mother would, from time to time, cook foods from her home, as the shrimp sauce was dumped in, there was, that special scent, it’d made my father hollered, “What are you cooking? It stinks!” or the spicy Badong Curry that’s enough, to make us all sweat, and naturally, my father, and Uncle Chen couldn’t, get use to these, and so, my mother’s home dishes started slowly, vanishing from our supper tables. Only on the few times we’d visited our maternal grandmother’s home, did we get to have those tastes again. Being bathed in the spices when I was younger, increased my tolerance for the spiciness and the sourness of the Southeast Asian dishes.

In a blink of an eye, my mother’s time here in Taiwan, was longer than her time in Indonesia. And, every now and then, she’d, held up her chopsticks at the supper table, made fun, “From before when I’d just started using these, I couldn’t pick any food up.” As she’d chatted with me on the meals we’d shared when I was younger. It went from the family circling around the table, to just the two of us, opposite of one another, comparing the memories of the days we’d, shared. It’s said, that foods have eight tastes: sour, sweet, bitter, spicy, salty, etc., etc., etc., then, the ninth must be the taste of time.

And so, a lot of our lives are connected with foods, and, because this person’s mother was from Indonesia, naturally, the foods she was used to was different compared to the writer’s fathers, and, this added to the diversities of food items the writer had the chance of having growing up, and now, all those memories of the foods his mother cooked became, memories he’d, savored.