This is how my mother peels apples

I think the apple's rotten right to the core
From all the things passed down
From all the apples coming before

First, pick an apple. My first one was an Ambrosia that was too big for my hand, but you can use Honeycrisp, Envy, or Pink Lady. Hold your apple with your non-dominant hand, your fingertips on the apple's skin. It should be firm enough so your fingertips don’t slip on the wax, the apple snug against your palm, but not too tight it bruises the sweet flesh.

Second, pick a knife. It’s best to use a small fruit knife with a rounded tip. However, the choice is yours. I won't step in if you’re strong enough to articulate a cleaver through an apple. Once you get the hang of the techniques, the tool shouldn’t matter.

Now start peeling. Hold the knife with your right hand, placing your index finger on the back of the blade, and your thumb on the apple. Glide the blade on the skin slowly and there you are, peeling an apple. 

I was 10 when my mother taught me to peel. On a tropical summer day when our old AC hummed a monotonous song, she woke me up from my nap and instructed me to fetch her a knife and an apple from the kitchen. When I brought them back, she looked at me, You do it. It was my first time holding a knife. 

My fingers crushed the apple in fear of it slipping away and amputating me My knife work was sloppy at best, the skin I peeled had too much lingering fruit. The fingerprint I left on the apple deformed the shape and left embarrassing purple-brown dots. I lost in a race against the juice rolling down my forearms. The drops collected at my elbows, leaving a sticky sugar trail on their way. I sliced the apple into wobbly bites and presented them to my mother shamefully. My mother took a look at them and ate the pieces one by one. I joined her. As we finished the plate, my mother said calmly, Everything has a first time. Since then, I have become the designated apple peeler in my family. 

It’s been ten years since I first held a knife. As time passed, fruit peeling developed into a habit for me. I can peel an entire apple in one glide, the red string of skin circling down my lap like a cobra. I started with apples, then moved on to mangoes, peaches, oranges, and grapefruits. The nicks on my fingers are reminders of how many fruits I peeled during my adolescence. Now my mother only peels them when she wants to spoil me.

When she knew I was engulfed in schoolwork, she brought in a plate of freshly cut apples and mangoes. She placed them in the little space I had next to my textbooks and left. Other times, she told me to drop studying and come eat a few slices with her, then left. Her pieces are neat and pristine. I always thought her apples were sweeter than mine.

On my mother’s crooked right index finger lives an absence of flesh from a wood-chopping accident when she was a teen. It is her reminder of a childhood riddled with poverty, hunger, and food scavenging. Her family mixed rice with cassava to fill their bellies. They only ate meat once or twice a year. Her brothers fished or hunted ba ba for celebratory parties. All the kids in the family went to school and to bed hungry. My mother is the seventh child of eight siblings. My father is the fourth of six. Both of their families left the Central plains and relocated to the Northern mountain ranges, a byproduct of the violence that tormented my country for half a century. When she was 18, she weighed the same as I did in seventh grade. 

Forever imprinted with what hunger can do to you, she made sure I ate well, or more accurately, was fed well. She might have been preparing me for the day I become a motherless child. It could be tomorrow, the next decade, or she might outlive me. My mother lost her mother before I was born, when she was a new mother. Like every child who lost their mother, young and old, I imagine she must have missed her a lot. The future is uncertain, but I should know how to feed myself if the worst comes.  

Every day after work, my mother goes to the market where people transport fresh fruits and livestock from farms since dawn every day. She, still in her work clothes, used to pick me up from school to go with her, stopping at her frequent shops. The sales ladies pinched my cheeks, in awe of how fast I was growing every time they saw me. They told me I was as pale as a boiled egg, even to this day. She only shops from specific vendors, and I know her route by heart. Her favorite flower shop is right at the entrance, her favorite butcher opens in a small corner, her egg lady only goes to the market in the morning, and her tofu seller will call her when she sets up her shop. She comes home with heavy bags of food and a sesame donut that I might have finished before she started cooking dinner. I rarely ask for a specific food, but when I do, I will have it. 

When my mother is in the kitchen, she puts her entire mind on what she makes. She says, People can taste the attention you put into food. She nags at me when I check my phone and wait for boiling water at the same time. To her, chores are not a job, but survival skills. She made me help out in the kitchen since first grade. My tasks resembled a kitchen porter, chopping potatoes, washing vegetables, and preparing aromatics. I sulked when the onions made me tear up and squirmed at the sight of an empty cocoon left on spinach leaves. 

Slowly, from observation, I copied my mother’s recipes and attempted with simple dishes. Eggs braised in tomato sauce, pork shoulder sauteed in shallots, and deep-fried carps. She was the only critic I had. I never fulfilled the dream of cooking a full meal for her at home, so her recipes come in handy now that I no longer live under her roof. Whenever I crave the taste of home, I make food just the way she used to, paying extra attention to the cut of meat, and the texture of vegetables. Braised chicken with ginger in the winter, steamed zucchini in the summer, and egg rolls in the New Year’s. I take photos and send them to her. She seems proud on the phone, her eyes squinting from her beaming smile. This is my way of telling her I am doing fine and I miss her, the message weaved into the pixels.

I credit her worry for my barest necessities, sometimes primal, to our age gap. My mother was 36 when she got pregnant, and 37 when she gave birth. After I was born, my first home decided not to house any more guests because her only two visitors left her with C-section scars and a forest of stretch marks. She was not at her healthiest during the second trimester, resulting in her frequent visits to the hospital. She was bleeding out at one point and was on bed rest at another. I pushed her limits. Unable to give up her income, she took me to work with her as a landscape gardener at the city park. She kneeled on the soil tending to the flowers, her belly nearly touching the dirt. The sun burned her back, and I dragged her lower to the ground. She often told me, you who have everything don’t have anything at all. After all this work,  I don’t think moms are fond of the idea of seeing their creations starving themselves.

On the phone, she always greets me with Have you eaten? Did you get a good night's sleep? Are classes difficult? I made the mistake of complaining to her about the dining hall six years ago in my first month away from home. For the whole ten minutes of listening to how the veggies were rock solid, how the chicken was raw, and how the desserts were so sweet they dried out my tastebuds, my mother stayed quiet, her gaze diverted. She sent me a long paragraph later detailing how her worries couldn’t reach me past the boundaries of my childhood home, and that I needed to take care of myself better. Since then, even when I couldn’t find time to eat anything but a coffee, I tell her that Food is great, and I’m gaining weight. I’m sure she knows, but I’m also sure she trusts that I can feed myself better if time permits. Love is pinned down in the mundane and bodily. Love speaks in the language of material care when sentiments fall short. Love fills the role of worry because otherwise, love has no grounds.

The truth is, much of what I learned in her kitchen grew obsolete in this new country. They don’t peel apples by hand in America. They don’t have fresh mangoes or guavas. The first time I saw my friends in high school push a circular tool down the center of an apple to make slices, I was mortified. Part impressed by how much technology has replaced hands, part ashamed I had to learn this skill as a child. They also don’t debone a live fish or pluck the hair of a chicken in their sink. I buy packaged chicken thighs and wings in chilled plastic containers.

I bite into apples now, the juice still running down my hand. The skin is said to be the most nutritious part of the fruit, and I have known to peel it off. I don’t like the bitter taste of the skin and wax, but I accept it for the sake of convenience. Whenever I see endless lines of apples and cherries at the grocery store, I think about my mother and her daily trip to the market for fresh fruits and vegetables.

On the rare occasions when I miss her so much, I pick up my smallest KitchenAid knife and peel the skin off the way my mother taught me to. My childhood and I don’t exist on the same timeline. When I think about it, it appears like a distant planet that humans can only get glimpses of. Like how I was growing up so close to the soil of my homeland, I never went far from where they raised me. 

The skill she taught me at 10 has brought me more than food. While I found it unfair I had to experience those painful nicks so early, she taught me how to manipulate a tool that could kill you to bring you salvation. Fallen in untrained hands, a knife, dull or sharp, is lethal. Only unhesitant hands could hold its end, glide it, and yield food.

Food is one of the first bases of human existence and of any culture. Food is community, food is family and food is love. My ancestors were farmers and foragers, so we worship gods and goddesses of agriculture. Much of our traditional diet consists of vegetables and water-based cooking methods. My ancestors boiled yams, cassava, kohlrabis, and bamboo shoots. They caught small animals and steamed them. The guts, liver, heart, and organs were cherished in every meal, sometimes making a name in regional delicacy menus. The people killed pigs to offer to gods, honoring life by eating pig ears, tails, and trotters.  They fermented cabbages, fish sauce, and rice. They ground soybeans for milk and tofu. They drank coconut water, ate coconut flesh, built houses with coconut trees, and roofed with leaves. For inedible parts, they made fertilizers and fed their cattle. The byproducts of every center product were reused and consumed until the very end of its existence. 

This language got lost in the marriage of the Industrial Revolution and Imperialism. When the French entered my country through a small peninsula in the late nineteenth century, they brought bicycles and guns. They called us savages. Rice fields were bulldozed to make space for tobacco and rubber plantations. Scholars were taken out of their Confucius curriculum to become workers. Dirty Annamite went to work and never came home again. Others starved to death. 

But the people must eat. The people must be strong to carry on, to revolt, to govern, to rebel. So the people ate everything they could find. When the rich colonial class threw out feet and gizzards, the people snuck them back to their huts and shared the little proteins. The people caught dogs, cats, insects, and rats to fuel their fire. The people sacrificed their pets and livestock for their mortality. The people dreamed of freedom while following rice carts to collect broken grains. The people sustained.

When the people were liberated, these habits stayed with their offspring. We eat the same foods our ancestors ate to remind us of what they had to go through. The pains passed down through our diet integrated into our culture and lived on. While less and less consume these foods, they never completely disappear. Especially, not in the eyes of those who inherited the legacy that led to this outcome.

While I do not claim the struggles of those who immigrated to America seeking asylum, I know how much preconceived connotations surrounding food affect them. However, when they were conditioned to shy away from their culture, the American microaggression angers me. They can worship sushi and butter chicken but a whole steamed fish or tripes disgusts them. They shoot hateful glares at the sight or smell of an unfamiliar dish. They fake vomiting and cover their noses when they see us enjoy foods we grew up eating. They are the biggest consumers of chicken nuggets, sausages, and calamari, but can’t tell you how these are made. Again, they call us savages, meticulously and condescending.

So like the people, I rebel. Quietly. I return to what my mother and her mother did. I ferment my rice to make a sour paste. I peel apples. I buy fresh cabbages and wash them. I scale my fish in the sink and ask the butcher for the carcass so I could make broth. I stuff dills into my catfish and steam the whole thing live with soy sauce. I sautee shallots and garlic with fish sauce, leaving traces of what my childhood kitchen smelled like in communal kitchens. I make tapioca. In my apartment, we grow spring onions in shallow water cups from the leftover stems and grow bean sprouts from mung beans in empty oat milk cartons. Food is our weapon and food is our solace.

When my blade slices into the boiled pork belly chops to make spring rolls with my dong huong, I think of my mother. I cook my food the same way she cooks hers. I feed my newfound family the same way she feeds me. When I can, I deep fry tofu and braise chicken thighs for them, imagining my hands as her hands. In my kitchen, I erect a shrine for her. Holding the knife, I chopped salvation into life. An act of nurturing became an act of revolution. We keep ourselves and what came before us alive in a soundless coup de tat. We continue to keep our culture breathing by blowing fire in the kitchen of wherever our home may be. We feed ourselves and the people with the same recipes our ancestors created for themselves.

But food is more than a weapon. Food is intimate. Caring for someone’s most basic well-being requires a level of trust and attention no other love can rival. Love makes people remember someone’s preference for spices, ingredients, and practices. Love makes people cater to someone else, hoping they like what they are fed. 

In our folk beliefs, the first-born is called a con so and every child born after is called a con rạ. Our ancestors believed con rạ are less picky and generally less troublesome. While it could be due to the first-time parent’s lack of experience with childbirth, truthfully, I was not much of a problem to my mother. I ate everything I was fed, but my older sister showed strong preferences even as a baby. I thought everything she made was the best food in the world and no Michelin-star-studded chefs could compete with her. To this day, after I have eaten exotic foods I can’t describe to her, I still long for the ribs she makes every Sunday. No one cares about the food I eat as much as she does. My mother is my first home and I return to her so often.

But if I have to tell you why I love my mother so much, I will tell you of the time I was five and we were at a fair near my kindergarten. She dressed me in my best clothes, a white linen sleeveless dress with tiny flowers embroidered across the torso. I would love to tell you for I cannot remember the reason we were at the fair, but there we were strolling across the yard, hand in hand. A young woman approached my mother and asked if we would like to volunteer for a contest at the fair. She tried to convince us by saying it would be a waste if my dress wasn’t shown to everyone. We agreed.

The woman led us on a stage, joining five other families. They were all mother and child, some with sons and some with daughters. The contest was to see which mother knew their child the best. They gave me a whiteboard where I could write my answers while asking my mother to announce hers into a mic. She knew every correct answer, from my favorite color, my favorite dish, my favorite subject in school, and even the fact that I eat frozen yogurt behind her back. She made it seem so easy. In the end, the fair gave us a striped paper bag full of snacks from their sponsors as first-place prizes. 

I doubt I still like the same things I did when I was five and even more uncertain if my mother still knows everything about me. Growing up didn’t teach me to hide things away from her, but it created a space where she doesn’t have close control of how I spend my time. I tell her stories here and there, but I keep things for myself. I’m sure she does too. But as I watch her trying to pronounce the names of my schools despite not knowing a single word in English, it turns me into a five-year-old again. It reminds me to be patient with her if she asks me how to use Facebook and how to set up Face ID on her phone. After all, she was patient when I was learning to live. Love hides itself in the unintentional and daily. Love is easy to miss if we don’t stop and watch it sprout out from the cracks of our routine.