Longing: Mom's Home Cooking, and a Hometown of Greenery
I grew up in the countryside, among vegetable gardens, rice paddies and bamboo groves; egrets wandering, frogs croaking, birds calling.
My mother is a traditional woman, and morning, noon and night she always laid out meal after meal for our whole family (Taiwanese). As a child, I often envied my classmates, who could pick and choose at fancy breakfast shops. It was not until I entered high school, listening to my classmates' envy and complaints, that I understood how hard-won the ordinary food in my hands was, and my heart brimmed with a sweet warmth.
When I went to university, I left home and was just like a bird that had flown away, breathing the fresh, free air and never wanting to return. Yet it was hard to find, in that faraway place, that good flavor that warmed you to the heart. That good flavor was not the taste of rare delicacies or the high-end dishes of restaurants, but something that, at the very first bite, instantly carried you back to the "rumbling battle scene" of Mom's kitchen, back to the throbbing of that hometown of greenery.
Only then did I discover that even far away, I could not change the deep bond in my very blood. Today, in the study room at school, I read "The Taste of Flowers from the Military Dependents' Village" and "Love of Food," and also read the copy and watched the video for the new book "A Journey of Lingering Flavors." Through words that long for home by way of the good flavors of home, the author leads readers on one nostalgic journey after another. I think that each home-style dish, once placed in the mouth, lingers there. It becomes a lifelong, deep-rooted obsession that I cannot bear to lose. And reading them, I too began to miss home…….
My hometown, full of greenery, its branches and leaves rustling. I am thankful, truly thankful. Though a small factory building has gone up, it has not changed all that much. I hope, truly hope. Amid all the ever-shifting splendor, I can still keep that small, quiet place to dwell.
As I write this piece, I cannot stop listening to Na Ying's "The Changing Years." In its lyrics, she writes of the helplessness that the rapid changes of today's society, the transformations of the world, bring to people. Is it that, in what people believe to be their steps forward, they have lost the simple, pure truth that belongs to the heart?