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My frail and forgetful mother springs to life making spring rolls
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“LIAR! That never happened.”
It happened. She just no longer can recall. Five years ago, my mother, who is now 82, was diagnosed with dementia and Alzheimer’s, and her short-term memories are almost non-existent.
Unless something very dramatic — death, divorce, accidents, and marriages — happens to those very dear to her she retains nothing of the immediate past. She has, too, become paranoid and housebound, and the once vivacious, outgoing and beautiful woman has become frail and depressed.
But when it comes to the distant past, and especially when it involves cooking, it is another story altogether.
“Mother,” I say to her on the phone, changing the subject. “How do you make banh tom co ngu?” That’s a Vietnamese fried shrimp cake made with yam.
“Well,” she responds with no hesitation, “you need both rice powder and starch. You need to make sure it’s equal parts and you keep the head of the shrimp, that’s the best part. You need to have good, light oil.” She rattles off the recipe with increasing confidence. “Be careful, if you use too much starch, it doesn’t get crunchy.”
I already know how to make banh tom co ngu. In fact, I learned dozens of dishes from her by simply watching or listening and occasionally assisting her in the kitchen over the years. I asked because I simply wanted to hear her talk with confidence, to have her in her element, and not in her self-pitying voice when that dominates her outlook in old age, a mother abandoned.
I want my mother at her best: cooking and providing for her family.
Indeed, ever since I can remember there was some sort of party or another every week in our house during the war in Vietnam. My father, a high-ranking army officer in the ARVN, (Army Republic of Vietnam) always had important guests to our house.
Vietnamese ministers, generals, visiting dignitaries, and yes, even American stars — Robert Mitchum and John Wayne and Jennifer Jones — had graced our dining tables during the Vietnam War. And Mother — with the help of servants — would always be cooking — and entertaining father’s guests.
Or else, it was birthdays and death anniversaries, or Vietnamese lunar new year or Christmas eve, when Mother’s tireless cooking made our lives luxurious, celebratory, comfortable.
The dishes could be elaborate. There’s the fish dip that is she made of sea bass and dills and celery and homemade aioli sauce, to be eaten with shrimp crackers or fried bread. The steamed fish head and tail are retained, but its body is made entirely of fish dip mixed with aioli, its scales made of colorful carrots and beets. Then there’s that special gourd and mushroom soup, which is served in an actual gourd.
In Dalat, Vietnam, that French built hillside station full of lycee and villas, where we lived for five years, she taught a free pastry class, showing our neighbors how to make pate chaud, choux a la creme, eclaire, buche de noel.
No longer capable of cooking
It is a sad thing, therefore, to see her so frail and forgetful and depressed, and no longer capable of cooking. She can barely make rice and heat soup.
“I don’t know what happened,” she said one day when I came to visit and wanted to cook for my parents. “Someone stole all my knives.” I kept searching and finally found three knives hidden under the sofa’s cushions. It was depressing: Her fear of robbers and thieves is overwhelming her, to the point where she feels the need to defend herself with the knives she once used to create such fabulous, sumptuous meals.
Still, dinner needs to be made. So for an appetizer I make the classic Vietnamese spring roll. I mix pork with fish sauce, black pepper, crab meat, green onion, and vermicelli. I brought out rice papers and warm water. “Let me help,” she said. She got up from the sofa in which she often lay listless, watching her Korean soap operas.
Though she could never cook an entire meal again, she was her old self as she worked. The bony fingers are guided by muscle memories. And as she rolled her spring rolls — a scoop of mixed ground pork with crab meat, a wet rice paper — she began to remember.
“Back when we were in Hue, I remember making dinner for 25 guests,” she would say, “Mrs Ngoc, she would send her daughters. My gosh, that woman had six of them. And they all worked so hard.” Mother started laughing.
She remembered the women crowding her kitchen. How they gossiped as they worked. One young woman had a great voice and she often sang. They shared recipes. She remembered a gentle world long gone. And I encouraged her. I gave her more rice papers. And we rolled cha gio together. We made more than we could possibly eat. But it didn’t matter. We rolled back the clock. We talked about food, cooking. We talked about the past.
Andrew Lam is New America editor and the author of “East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres” and “Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora.” His book of short stories, “Birds of Paradise Lost,” was published last year.
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