(from “Think of Me” in the musical Phantom of the Opera)
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Today’s been an interesting day, full of memories.
For dinner, I went with my aunt and cousin to the near by Mexican restaurant. Despite being in the middle of suburbia, this place has really decent Mexican food and I’ve always enjoyed going. My aunt got the Caldo de Res, a beef soup with various vegetables. After of course butchering the name in her version of Spanish, I began reminiscing about my grandmother’s own soup. She would make that exact soup for my own father for lunch. I remember her pouring over the pot, adding different ingredients as the time went. I remember the smell of the soup in the house, sitting across from my dad as he ate a quick lunch while he was home from work. He usually had the soup with toasted tortillas that he would either dip into the soup or just throw little pieces into the soup. I would sometimes sit in his lap, when I was small enough to, and steal some of the tortilla or the boiled corn in the soup.
My grandmother was a good cook. She never, to my memory, used a cookbook or a recipe. I remember helping her cook, making various Salvadorean dishes like cheese and horchata and fish soup (lovingly called stinky fish soup by my sister and I). My favourite as a child was her chicken soup, which I always requested when I was sick as “sopa de pio pio” (cheep cheep soup).
I remember helping my own mother cook as well, but those memories are vaguer. Because of a weird allergy to eggs, cooking with my mother was always running into problems until the allergy went away. My mother often made a variety of dishes and she had a wide array of cookbooks. Amazingly, those are some of the memories that are clearer.
My aunts have tried recreate the meals, but because of my memories, I avoid eating those. It’s been a long road, being able to cope. A stranger once told that one doesn’t ever get over the loss, but instead learns to live with it.
As I write this, I’m watching Finding Neverland. I first saw this movie with my friends on my birthday. With the mother being sick and the children not knowing or understanding, this struck a chord with me. So naturally at the end of the movie, I was bawling. It brings about the grief that I have and will never get over. It’s that grief that reminds me of all that I had with them. When it reminds me that, though my memories have faded, my grief is really my love for my grandmother and mother.
First up is Seattle-based 
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