At the end of a recent visit to my parents' place in Scarborough, the eastern Toronto neighbourhood where they've lived for the past two years, my mom sent me home with the usual package of repurposed yogurt and sour-cream containers filled with Sri Lankan dishes: fiery eggplant gravy, spinach curry, dhal, curry-leaf chutney. I'd protested, as these were meals she had prepared for herself and my dad and felt obligated to share. "I don't want to take your food. I have plenty at home!" I told her. But she insisted. That evening, I sent her the e-mail I always send, thanking her for all the delicious home cooking.
But calling the contents of those little containers delicious was actually a lie – I hadn't tasted any of it, and had instead thrown most of it into the freezer. This act of ungratefulness would shock my mother, who has cooked for me all my life and still pines to. In her response to my e-mail, she wrote the same words she frequently speaks: "I wish you stayed next door so that we can pass on our food now and then." As I read her note, the sentiment broke my heart, because as I grow up and she grows old, being fed by my mother gets harder to stomach.
When I was a kid and we'd be driving back home from dinner parties at friends and relatives', I'd sometimes review the meal from the back seat, both to make conversation and to shamelessly suck up: "The dhal was so mushy." "The kathrikai kulambu [eggplant curry] didn't taste as good as yours." "Did they order the chicken curry from a restaurant? You could tell." Sometimes my mom would agree, but she often kept silent out of politeness. If I looked at her reflection in the rear-view mirror, though, I'd catch her smirking with satisfaction.
Every Saturday, she set up residence in the kitchen after the breakfast dishes had been cleared and stayed there till dinner was served at 8 p.m. I loved Saturdays nights. Dinner was usually served to me and my brother first, and I would have my pick of the largest, fleshiest pieces of meat in the pot of curry. Each grain of basmati was fluffy and perfectly defined. She'd hover behind us as we savoured the first few bites, interrogating us about how everything tasted. If the praise wasn't effusive, she assumed she'd failed.
The best dish was shrimp or crab curry, both in the same coconut-milk gravy steeped with fenugreek, mustard, cumin and fennel seeds and a few teaspoons of roasted curry powder. Even after all the juicy tiger prawns or crab legs had been fished out of the CorningWare dish, the fragrant gravy, thickened by tomatoes and onions, was not to be wasted. We poured it over rice or used it as a dip for roti or parathas. Sometimes my dad ate it with toasted slices of whole-wheat Dempster's. It was the dish I requested for birthdays, or trips home after I'd moved away.
On those Saturdays when my mom cooked, if I forgot to take the coats out of the closet near the kitchen and quarantine them upstairs behind my bedroom door, I'd sometimes be accused of "smelling like curry" on Monday at school. To me, it was a small tradeoff for food I was confident was better than anything my classmates were eating. In truth, it was the only food I knew.
And I knew it didn't come easy. It was more labour-intensive and time consuming than anything I could ever see myself doing. Instead of grating carrots for the spicy rice pilaf she often made, she'd use a dull steak knife to julienne them into perfect matchsticks. Once, when she was preparing string hoppers, I tried my hand at the device she used to make the steamed nests of vermicelli-like noodles. Balls of rice-flour dough were forced through the small holes in a two-part wooden tool that functioned like a garlic press. My weak wrists trembled and my jaw clenched as I tried to squeeze the noodles out. I gave up, only having completed a pathetic half-nest. I never looked at my mom's arms the same way again, knowing then that impressive biceps hid beneath her soft, doughy skin.
That said, I can't remember the last time my mother made string hoppers at home. In 2008, she was diagnosed with osteoporosis and with each passing year, her body gives up on her a little more. Standing at the counter to prepare dinner now makes her legs and back ache. All the precision dicing of onions, mushrooms, beans and carrots leaves her with sore wrists and knuckles.
A few years ago, my mom tried and failed twice to make a tray of the baked chicken drumsticks I loved when I was a kid. She couldn't remember the recipe, a complex combination of sauces and spices, which I'd just assumed had been imprinted on her brain. After the second batch came out, she was certain she hadn't added the right amount of pineapple sauce, or that the heat wasn't enough. She was right. The recipe was off, though I couldn't put my finger on what was missing. Seeing the look of disappointment on her face left me no choice but to lie. No, no, this was perfect. Just how I remembered! While it was the special-occasion meal of my childhood, crab curry has become her go-to now because of how easy it is to make. Unlike chicken or goat, which require her to chop through bones with a butcher's knife, she can just defrost the crab bodies and legs and throw them in the pot. Oddly enough, the dish I longed for when I was a stressed-out university student, that I fantasized about eating on so many flights home to visit my parents, has now become so commonplace that I've grown tired of it. But I can't tell my mom that.
After all, cooking is the last way she knows how to mother me. Three years ago, while I was recovering from a surgery, she moved into my house for two weeks and quickly claimed the kitchen as her own, scrubbing down the sink and re-organizing our cupboards to her liking. She asked where my husband and I kept the curry powder. I couldn't remember the last time I'd used it, or when it had been bought, but I told her where to find it.
A few weeks later, I noticed she'd left me some of her own Sri Lankan-style curry powder that she'd made in her ancient Moulinex coffee grinder; she considered it a sin to use store-bought. Our own jar of curry powder was still in the cupboard with its contents intact, but it sported a new hand-written label that oozed with motherly judgment: "Curry powder? Smells more like turmeric."
It will be my birthday soon, and she will insist, as she has the past few years, on cooking me dinner. I will want my husband to grill me a medium-rare steak with roasted baby potatoes, or to go out for dinner at a nice neighbourhood restaurant, but I will probably let my mom bring over some crab curry in a CorningWare dish, made with homemade roasted curry powder, not that garbage they sell at the supermarket. I will do it so she can nervously hover over me as I take those first bites, eager for my approval.