The little girl is sharpening her knife with great vigor. What is she up to?
Three years ago we went to the United States for a trip and stayed at a friend's home in LA. Our friend had a pair of lovely girls, a little older than Huang Xiaolu, and the three of them played together; Xiaolu was always looked after as the younger sister. At breakfast time, the eldest sister asked her younger sister what she wanted to eat. "Omelette," and there was Lea, deftly heating the pan, beating the eggs, frying the eggs and plating them, without a trace of fear. Chloe, off to one side, beamed as she carried the eggs away, while Xiaolu wore a look of envy and said, "I want one too!"
What Xiaolu wanted was not just the omelette, but also the act of "making an omelette."
After returning to Taipei, Huang Xiaolu would drift into the kitchen every now and then, poking around and pointing at things, asking, "How do you fry fish?" "How do you cook dumplings?" "Can I help you cut the radish?" "When can you let me fry an egg?" It seemed that being able to serve as a little helper in the kitchen for thirty minutes was the happiest thing in the world for her.
I still remember when Tietou had just been born and Lu Niang was still staying at the postpartum care center. One day, Xiaolu suddenly held up the iPad and said, "Let's make cookies!" It turned out she had just watched a cartoon on it, and the scene of the main character mixing flour, beating eggs and sprinkling sugar made her think baking cookies was not hard at all, so she dragged me to the supermarket to buy the ingredients, then followed the steps in the cartoon and baked the cookies one step at a time (yes, we really did watch the cartoon while baking the cookies), and took them to the postpartum care center for Mommy to eat.
As she grew older, this girl made more and more demands about "tools" - she wanted her own cutting board, measuring cup, bread knife, small kitchen knife and even a frying pan; "because yours, the grown-ups', are not easy to use," she always said. So when I cook, there is another sous-chef at my side whom I can put to work, helping peel garlic, cut onions, peel radishes and add mushrooms. Of course, dishes that need high heat for a quick stir-fry cannot be handed to her, but watching her stand on a low stool happily stirring Italian meat sauce, I think it will not be long. After we moved, we bought a big table, and Huang Xiaolu's baking business grew even bigger; every so often she would pester her mother to bake a batch of cookies, then wrap them up beautifully and take them to dance class to share with her teachers and classmates.
A while ago, I hitched a ride on an office activity and went to Sanxing in Yilan, and Huang Xiaolu excitedly went down into the scallion fields with a group of friends and pulled up a whole bunch of scallions to bring home. For about a week, every dish at home had fragrant Sanxing scallions. Fried rice, baked salmon, three-cup chicken, clam soup - whenever each dish came to the table, Huang Xiaolu would take a deep breath and say happily, "So fragrant! This was stir-fried with the Sanxing scallions I pulled, right? Awesome!"
Yes, awesome. And if one day it could be my turn to stand aside and watch you cook, that would be even more awesome.
From the place of production to the dining table, sometimes I wonder just which step I should bring the child into, so that she can grow slowly under my control. Only later did I gradually realize that children do not think that much; all she wants is a sudden spark of inspiration, and the simplest thing can give her the sense of achievement that says "I helped!" Then a more complex world will unfold step by step. But we grown-ups, whether we call it striving for perfection or simply not having enough time, have long since lost that sense of play of playing house, and so it is hard to enjoy having the child circling around you and making a mess of the kitchen, all just to make a dish she saw or thought of or tasted or heard of or smelled or dreamed of somewhere. And perhaps there should be an afternoon when the grown-ups step aside and watch the children cook up whatever dishes they find interesting.
Only, when I think of the scene of post-disaster reconstruction… hmm, let's still hold this activity at your place. (laughs)