She Didn't Know How to Say Sorry, So She Cooked Instead

My mom's rice and peas alone is a love language to be studied.

Note: I hesitated to post this. I thought to myself, "Damn, another heavy drop after the last one?" But your girl hasn't always been the best with writing consistency, and I am in a season of obedience, accountability and discipline.

This piece is a quiet companion to the last reflection, "I come from women who stayed too long." It's really not as heavy, but still, take your time with it.

Cooking.

Before wounds had words, before love had space, before I even understood what sacrifice looked like - there was fire, salt, oil and care.

My mother doesn't often say sorry.

She cooks.

Cooking and my mother go hand in hand like white on rice, pun intended. But I'm only now beginning to realize: cooking is also how my mother copes.

I didn't realize it was a way of coping until watching her now battle cancer.

When we get bad news at the hospital and pile into the car, she's quiet and shut down before whispering "mek wi stop at No Frills" our local grocery store here in Toronto. I'd be lying if I didn't share that I feel myself flinch at this sometimes, annoyed, hungry, wanting to go straight home after spending hours at the hospital, but giving in because I know this is her ritual and what she wants to do. If you've ever moved through a day with a Caribbean elder mother, you know it's never just No Frills. It's FreshCo. The bank. The gas station. Before you know it, two more hours have passed.

She sifts through yams and bananas, eddoes, already thinking of what soup she will make come Saturday. (Saturday in a Jamaican household is made for soup - beef or chicken, corn, lentil, red peas - you name it. Soup was being prepared on Saturday, stock full of provisions and dumpling, meat, lentils, spices, whatever you had went into that soup.)

women working in Maypen Market, Clarendon Jamaica // taken by me in 2021.

In spite of weakness, my mom gets up in a rush most mornings to clean meat, scale fish, season, and stand over a hot stove for hours every week.

A way to find reprieve, I suppose.

Her hands are steady and stubborn as she cuts onions and throws meat in pots. Oil sometimes flashing - she doesn't flinch.

This makes me think of duty. Duty over rest. And although I now realize that she might be using grocery runs to avoid the weight of death, how much of this is still ingrained in her as her duty to her family? How much of this duty has become her identity? Will she give space to softness? Will she hand over the reins of responsibility and say "I can't do this anymore"? Will she give me permission to also pause and lean into softness?

Cooking.

My mom's rice and peas alone is a love language to be studied. The time she takes to cut up the flesh of coconuts, soak then blend out her own coconut milk, put the hard red beans (red peas as we call it) to boil on the stove with her seasonings and coconut milk the night before. The care she puts into waking up the next morning to restart the boil before adding in the basmati rice, re-flavouring, then putting it in the oven to complete the cook. There are faster ways to do this process. She could use store bought milk or coconut cream, or tin peas, but she refuses. There's nothing quite like her rice and peas. I've told many that I could eat the 'dry rice and peas just suh' because of how flavourful every grain, every forkful is.

Cooking.

It's something everyone knows my mom for, I would say it's her passion even though she has never expressed it as such. I think cooking took her mind away from the stressors she carried. If we had more than enough, that meant we were abundant. If the fridge was fully stocked that meant we were overflowing. If people came to visit, we could and would always feed them.

Cooking well brought affirmation. "Nat, it taste good?" she would always ask before I even got the fork into my mouth. Cooking became her identity.

When I was younger and still living at home, I'd attempt to go into the kitchen to try to cook something. Within minutes, I would hear the kitchen door open, she would walk in and without hesitation start telling me all the ways I wasn't doing it right. The heat was too high. I wasn't seasoning the meat properly. I took too long to cut up the onions. And before I knew it, she was beside me, seasoning the pot. I would leave the kitchen, temperamental and frustrated.

I recognize now that she didn't know how not to help, even if I was receiving it as criticism. I would let the criticism sit in my belly and I'd stew inside - to be honest, it still lands like that sometimes - her criticisms sitting in my belly sharp like a knife cutting through me.

However I am starting to see it differently now. I'm beginning to realize that maybe love, for her, only makes sense when her hands are busy. Maybe the kitchen is where she feels the most useful, most certain, most her.

Cooking from young kept her mind off trauma. It pleased her parents and fed her siblings. Cooking when she became a wife meant worthiness, look at how well I take care of you, you will never go hungry with me. Cooking when she became a mother meant I have enough to grow you, pour into you, you will become my prize and joy.

Cooking through life was a way to show care, responsibility, community, servitude. Cooking meant love.

Sometimes she'd get pissed off and say 'mi nah cook fi unno again, guh find someting eat' and within a week she would be back behind the stove.

Cooking was currency.

Cooking was language.

Cooking was also apology. I'm vex with you, but "yuh eat something yet?" Every battle, harsh word, miscommunication and misunderstanding left unspoken framed in one question to invite you back to the dinner table and ensure you were fed because there is still love here.

Cooking was meditative. She would get lost in the process quietly to herself in the kitchen for 2-3 hours before proclaiming to everyone in the house that the food was done before setting herself a bath to soak in the tub, usually being the last person to eat in the house herself. As I read this line back, I see the sacrifice and the self care in it.

Cooking.

I enjoy cooking, but only when I want to create, not out of duty or to cope.

Cooking for me is also meditative and it's very much my expression of love: I love you and I felt that I wanted to cook this for you today or I love myself and I felt I wanted to cook myself something - out of sheer pleasure and joy of doing it. I've learned many of my mom's recipes, some I've perfected, some I'm still getting there.

Sometimes guilt sets in - that I don't want to get up and cook everyday. I think of my father, who my mother has spoiled with her cooking, her consistency, her sense of duty. I wonder how he'll fare when our lives change when she passes, when I bring food to him on weekends, or decide I'm ordering in because it's just easier.

I worry about the day when their kitchen will fall silent.

Sometimes there's guilt because I still haven't learned to steam fish the way she does, the way my dad enjoys, but I've got the oxtail, chicken in the oven, rice and peas and curry down to a science - will that be enough for him?

Sometimes there's reverence for just how much my mother has done. How much she has created, and how well fed she has become.

And sometimes there is resistance. I just don't want to. I am tired and where she was not able to find slowness and softness, I am leaning all the way in.

And sometimes there's upset. Come out of the kitchen mom - and just rest. Why won't you rest? Why can't you see that all you are attached to is coming undone and asking you to simply be still? What would it mean if you could simply look back at me, with no resistance and say, "Okay"?

Maybe that would be enough. Maybe then I would know you felt worthy of receiving. Maybe then I could tell you that you've cooked enough. Maybe then, we'd both remember: love was always in the fire, the salt, the oil, the care.

---

Author's Note:

I've decided to commit myself to writing more consistently. But the truth is, my writing has always poured out of my emotions and experiences, and sometimes when nothing is going on, when you're sitting in the silence - no words form. Because of this and because of my desire to write more consistently, I recently asked ChatGPT to create some title prompts for me based on what it thinks it knows of me and it gave me this one "She Didn't Know How to Say Sorry, So She Cooked Instead." Something about this prompt stirred me up. I immediately saw my mother in the kitchen stirring her pot, solemn expression on her face, quiet. This piece initially came out of sitting with the quiet ways my mother has shown love but then it evolved into this desire, this wanting - to hold her while she's still here. To name the tenderness, the tiredness, and the tension, that so often lives between daughters and the women who raised us. This is for the ones who showed love with their hands, and the ones learning how to offer love back by asking them to rest.

Love you,

‘til next time,

tash ♡

---

Bare with Me is a free monthly musing. If you’re not currently subscribed, what are ya waiting for? Come join me for the ride - it’s free! If these musings, prompts and lessons resonate with you and you want to go deeper into self work, consider upgrading your subscription :) I’m transitioning to making writing my full time endeavour, any support is appreciated.