“Why did you leave?” His voice is low and calm. She’s quiet for a few moments, searching for the right words. “If I’m being honest, I was afraid to stay.” She hesitates before continuing. “Sticking with things I might not be good at isn’t exactly my strong suit.” Saying the words out loud feels like plunging into a pool of dark, freezing cold water.
Her siblings rib her endlessly about her competitive streak—it’s funny and tender-hearted coming from them, but the truth of it pierces her nonetheless every time. She knows that a sharp, merciless streak runs through her core, like a bright silver ribbon.
Telling him this is terrifying. Her friend Addie told her years ago that the hardest part of being in a truly good relationship is that you can only have it if you let someone see all the bad parts of you. At the time she’d pictured the soft, bruised spots on a peach. Who wouldn’t put it down after picking it up, smelling its sweet and floral scent, running their hands over its otherwise perfectly smooth surface only to discover something rotten underneath?
When she feels lonely, she imagines her mom at her age. She loves hearing the story of how she got her first job while she was still a fresh-faced, scrubbed-clean college senior, all dewy skin and combed hair and Ali McGraw looks. She flew across the country to interview at a huge engineering company, walking in to meet the hiring manager in a too-short plaid skirt: her best guess at a professional outfit. In his subsequent rejection, he pointed out coldly that she didn’t seem prepared for the business world, given her attire.
She wouldn’t have accepted an offer anyway. The job was in Monterey: a place that didn’t seem like real life, but rather a sunshine dream straight out of a TV show. The constant flow of surfers outside her door and the strange halo effect of the Hollywood culture would have made her more homesick than the lack of seasons. But it stung, as these things always do. (The idea of how young and clear-eyed she’d been makes her want to reach out and take her mom’s hand—and maybe key the guy’s car retroactively.)
Instead, she said yes to working as one of the first female engineers at Bell Laboratories. (Every time she holds her cell phone, she gets a small thrill thinking of her mother helping to invent the first hand-held mobile phone.) She knows a few details about the outlines of her mother’s life then: how she’d take long runs at lunchtime, much to the bewilderment of her middle-aged male colleagues who’d sit hunched over their desks eating takeout cheesesteaks from the bar-slash-luncheonette down the street. How she had to jog in a Speedo swimsuit, because no one made sports bras for women yet. How she lived alone in a small apartment.
The rest she fills in on her own, imagining whether she drank coffee (probably not) or met friends for drinks (occasionally, at parties thrown by acquaintances from college that all boasted the same trying-to-be-adult ambiance: a cheese plate with Cracker Barrel cheddar and the least expensive wine at the local wine shop) or read a book before bed (definitely yes). She’s gripped by a fascination with all the ordinary moments that would have made up her days; she’s almost desperate to know how she moved from young and tentative in the world to a confident mother who can change a tire, coax honey from a hive of bees, handle a flooded basement, and diagram a sentence.
Her favorite story—shared by her siblings—is the salad story. (For context: Their kitchen pantry resembled none of those of her classmates. There are no Oreos. No cans of Pringles. No fruit snacks or Keebler fudge stripes. Theirs was a household of wheat germ and natural peanut butter, the kind with the layer of oil you had to stir from the top.)
One day (she must have been in fifth grade or so), while sitting on a picnic blanket at the rec fields, eating turkey and cheddar sandwiches on homemade whole wheat bread, her mom glanced over at the family next to them. It was late afternoon and the evening was approaching that golden magic hour when everything glows and glints, the light painting over the ragged edges of the day until a certain dusky calm descends. There are shouts and screams from the soccer field in front of them—her brother Whit is playing midfield, and she can pick out his sandy blond swoop of hair from a distance.
Next to them sit the Mackenzie family: Trent Mackenzie is Whit’s best friend. He’s playing goalie and looks alternately terrified and bored at a distance, swinging his legs to kick the metal goal posts while he waits for anyone to come near enough for a wild shot. His two little sisters are cross-legged on their blanket, leaning against their mother who is doling out pink-frosted animal crackers and handfuls of Cheetos.
Her mom says idly, as if to no one in particular, “Gosh I used to love Cheetos.”
The world may as well have stopped turning on its axis for a split second for how shocked they were. Their mother has not only eaten, but loves Cheetos? She has witnessed her brother weeping with despair—in full meltdown mode—multiple times at the checkout counter of the grocery store, begging for chips, and her mom didn’t even bat an eye.
Her friends ate Lucky Charms and Cinnamon Toast Crunch; they ate Shredded Wheat and Cheerios and, on the best days, Raisin Bran, out of which she’d mine the lightly sugared fruit. Junk food is not in their family vernacular. (Now, as an adult, she sees this as an exceptional quality of her mother’s, not the deep and heart-wrenching sacrifice it seemed as an 8-year-old.)
With age, she appreciates it differently: All the moments they got that no one else did. On syrupy humid summer nights, her mom would heave their ancient Oster blender onto the counter and make milkshakes out of ice cream they’d churned earlier that day, fresh strawberries, and mint that grew in thickets on the banks of the stream below their house. She’d send them to the garden to dig for potatoes in the warm dirt, each one they unearthed eliciting crows of excitement. The potatoes would be sliced thickly, then fried in a stock pot of bubbling oil. Her mom taught them how to shake the French fries in a brown paper bag with a big pinch of salt.
She can close her eyes now and be back there in an instant: Out on the porch, the sun melting into the horizon like a scoop of peach sherbert. The grass beyond is thick and dotted with dandelions. She sits on the sun-warmed slate steps. Two old wooden Adirondack chairs creak indignantly as her brothers clamor up, balancing their milkshakes on their knees and grabbing fistfuls of the salty French fries.
Her mom leans over and shows her how to dip the end of one golden, crispy fry into the milkshake. Eww, she thinks, and then tries it and looks back, wide-eyed and incredulous. Has anything tasted so good before? The salt, the sweet, the fruit. The crunchy end of the fry, the custardy center—almost mashed potato-like, the creamy pink shake.
It grows duskier, tiny pinpricks of light announcing the arrival of fireflies. Right then, she wouldn’t trade this for a year’s supply of Dunkaroos. A truckload of Hostess cupcakes. An endless parade of pizza Lunchables.
She snaps back to that day on the soccer field—and their shock and awe at the revelation, because an essential component of her childhood was that they were not junk food eaters. Yes, they did get to eat all of the best things, so long as they were homemade, but that’s a distinction that’s largely lost on a fifth grader.
“You ate a Cheeto?” her brother stage-whispered, looking at their mom like she was suddenly a rock star or the president, all rolled into one. “Yup,” she said, still sounded oddly distant, like she wasn’t so much recalling the story as inhabiting it for a brief moment. “I’d come home from work and put a handful of them on a salad for dinner instead of croutons.”
Now, at about the same age her mom would have been, she thinks about this story differently. Rather than reveling in the illicit discovery of her mom’s brief dalliance with snack food, she wonders about the woman she was. Did she read a book while she ate the Cheetos salad? Did she sit alone at a small folding table in the kitchen? Was she lonely? Tired? What did she worry about? What did she picture happening the next day? What consumed the reaches of her brain in the era before you could simply reach for a phone and allow neon images to stream mindlessly into your head?
He’s watching her intently, as if he can see the film reel of memories playing in her head. Lately, she’s both completely uncertain of herself and entirely certain—a dizzying landscape of parallel emotions—and the thoughts of a young version of her mom are comfortingly grounding. Everyone progresses through their life, she thinks. I will too.
The tips of their fingers are tented against each other’s and she decides, of all the pictures swirling in her head, to tell him about the wheat germ. “We’d spread toast with butter and honey, then cover it with a coating of wheat germ. It was like hippie sprinkles. Like, carob instead of chocolate. It’s weird that we never ate tofu because, like, my mom seems like she was poised to be a prime consumer of tofu.”
He pulls her into his lap, and asks if she’ll make him tofu. “I’ll eat it if you make it, but first I think I need to make up for some of your lost years. With extra dessert.”
The kitchen is warm and brightly lit; she sits on the countertop watching him rifle through the cabinets. Behind the Wheat Thins and soy sauce—his shelves are comically sparse—he pulls out a cellophane sleeve of molasses cookies.
After dinner—the tofu he’s been promised, but made the way she likes it best: smothered in a sticky gingered lemon sauce—he carries a plate of cookies to the living room. The armchair in the corner is soft and oversized: ideal for one person partly flopped over the side, but not quite big enough for two. They sit in it together anyway, her feet tucked beneath his crooked legs. He breaks off a piece of cookie and holds it out to her: It’s soft and yielding under her teeth, and the sparkly coating of coarse raw sugar crunches as she chews.
Resting her head against his chest, they lie in the dim quiet. Suddenly, she thinks about the French fries and the milkshakes again. Maybe, she thinks, maybe I’ve been in training to recognize perfect pleasure all along, just like this.
Grain Bowls with Sticky Lemon Tofu
Serves 4, or 2 hungry people
For the tofu
400g firm tofu, drained and pressed
1/2 cup cornstarch
1/4 cup vegetable oil
For the sticky lemon sauce
1 tablespoon sesame oil
2” piece of ginger, peeled and grated
3/4 cup vegetable stock
juice of 2 lemons
1/4 cup honey
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon cornstarch
2 tablespoons water
For the bowls
4 cups cooked grains (I use a mix of brown rice, lentils, barley & quinoa)
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
2 tablespoons olive oil
pinch of salt
4 cups greens (any type: spring mix, kale, romaine, etc.)
2 cups cooked chickpeas (if using canned, rinse well)
For the tofu: Cut the tofu into bite-sized cubes. Toss with the cornstarch—I like to add the cubes and cornstarch to a ziplock bag and toss that way which coats evenly without a mess.
Heat the vegetable oil in a large skillet until shimmering. Add the tofu (shake off any excess cornstarch) and cook over medium-high heat, turning to get all sides cooked, until golden brown on all sides. Transfer the cooked tofu to a wire cooling rack (the space underneath allows it to stay crisp).
Next, make the sauce: Heat the sesame oil in a saucepan over medium-high heat; after about 30 seconds, add the ginger and stir for about 30 seconds.
Add the vegetable stock, lemon juice, honey, and salt, and bring to a boil.
Whisk together the cornstarch and water, then add to the pan. Keep cooking until the sauce starts to thicken, then remove from the heat.
Add the crispy tofu to the pan with the sauce and toss to coat well.
Warm the cooked grains in a large pan with the vinegar, olive oil, and salt.
Divide the warm grains between 4 bowls, and smoosh a cup of greens against the warm grains, allowing the greens to wilt slightly from the heat. Top with the lemon tofu and chickpeas.