Stay-at-home dad goes to the market to buy groceries, the whole process of shopping for fresh ingredients

In memory, my father rarely went to the vegetable market. When he did, it was mostly around Chinese New Year, shopping for New Year dishes at Nanmen Market, or occasionally bringing back crabs, large shrimp or sashimi from the market. In short, whenever my father went to the market, he seldom came back without armfuls of bags, and seldom escaped a scolding from my mother for being wasteful. After my mother passed away, my father lived alone, and often grumbled that shopping for food was hard when you were by yourself: he would always buy piles of vegetables and leave them in the fridge to spoil, or cook dishes, put them in storage containers, and forget about them after they had been frozen too long. Every time we went home for a meal, we would watch him, like a magician, open one container after another and tell us the order in which to reheat each one. A few years later, my father moved up into the mountains by himself, and with our work keeping us busy, the chances to eat together grew even rarer; when we did arrange to meet, it was somewhere outside, and my father no longer brought up the subject of buying groceries.

Compared with my father, I am someone who has to make a round of the vegetable market every day.

At first, the auntie selling vegetables thought I was an older student from nearby Chengchi University, and she would ask with a skeptical look, "Handsome, what vegetables are you buying today?" After a while, though, whether it was because she saw me out with the kids one time, her greeting changed to: "Have you already dropped the kids off at school?" The guy selling black pork at first asked me, "Is it you who does all the grocery shopping at your house? You're not a single dad, are you?" Later, he would slice meat while complaining to me about how sly and impossible to teach young girls are nowadays, and warning me that I had better establish my fatherly authority early, or I would surely regret it. I would just smile and say, "Girls are terrifying as soon as they hit first grade. Too late, too late."

Sometimes, while wandering the market, I would even get a call from the owner of the beef stall, saying, "We have creamy bok choy today. If you need some, come buy a little." The moment I thought of that look in Huang Xiaolu's eyes, lighting up whenever she saw bok choy, I would obediently swing by and buy a few packs of organic vegetables from Shoufeng Township in Hualien, and along the way pick up some sliced beef to go with the greens. My friends always laugh at me for shopping at the market so often that I even have the vegetable vendor's phone number, but I figure that if not for that, it would be hard to get first pick of the ingredients I want. Although bok choy is nothing special, bok choy that makes Huang Xiaolu smile and say it is delicious is not so easy to come by.

Come to think of it, simply because a child says something tastes good, remembering it and often keeping it on hand really is a parent's nature. And the reason I am so willing to be ordered around is, besides nature, probably even more connected to an amusing scene from two years ago.

Out of a strange insistence, I maintain that we must eat fish once a week, so that Huang Xiaolu gets enough DHA to help her brain develop. So one evening, this conversation appeared at our dinner table.

"I want to eat fish. Why is there no fish?" (This is what Huang Xiaolu asked after she had taken all the sausage)

"Then what kind of fish do you want? Steamed fish? Pan-fried fish? Or stir-fried fish?" (Complicating things is a kind of training)

"I want the third one."

"So stir-fried fish it is? Dad will stir-fry shark for you."

"Sharks are scary! They eat people!"

"Then if you eat shark, aren't you even scarier?"

"I don't want that! Then I want pan-fried fish. The same pan-fried fish as before."

"Oh, pan-fried milkfish?"

"Yes, pan-fried mu-mu fish."

The next morning, after dropping Huang Xiaolu off at school, I crossed the bridge to Muzha Market. Just after finishing my shopping, I was walking home along the riverbank levee, passing Huang Xiaolu's school, where they were chatting in the corridor. She saw me, happily waved at me, and told her friend, "This is my dad." I walked into the alley, getting closer, and heard her say:

"Dad! Did you buy fish?!"

That morning, the sunlight was just right. I stood at the school's back gate holding bags and bags of groceries, lifted one of the bags and said, "Yes! It's here!" And it was probably from that time on that I willingly became a stay-at-home dad who goes to the vegetable market every day.

Ah, now that I mention it, I suppose I should ask my dad to buy a free-range chicken from Wulai.