Her Hands His Eyes is a journal written in real time about writing my book. Every week I open the box a little further. A memory. A photograph. A recipe. This is Entry 5. Start from the beginning with Entry 1. You are reading this as I write it. When the book is ready you will be the first to know. Open The Box.
I stood at my stove this week and asked myself a question I did not expect.
Was I trying to perfect the dish or perfect the memory?
I am still not sure I know the answer.
This week I was working on the Chicken Rice Flake Soup. The one from the Korat stall my mother used to scooter me to after school. The dish always came with half an egg. I always asked for the other half. Every single time. I don’t remember if she ever gave it to me. I only remember the asking.
I think I nailed it on the first try.
But I kept going anyway.
Because the first try triggered something I was not prepared for. A flood of grief triggers I did not see coming. Memories of being a child. The scooter. The stall. My mother’s hands passing me the bowl. The sound of Thai afternoon around us. All of it arriving at once in my Florida kitchen because of a smell.
That is what grief triggers do. They do not knock. They do not ask permission. They just arrive. In a smell. In a taste. In a bowl of soup you have been trying to get right for weeks.
I kept making it. Not because it needed improving. Because I needed to stay inside the memory a little longer.
Four Tries
First try. Too much fish sauce. I told myself that was the reason it wasn’t right. It wasn’t the reason.
Second try. The rice flakes went soft. I told myself that was the problem. It wasn’t the problem.
Third try. Close. But missing something I couldn’t name. I told myself I needed one more adjustment. I didn’t need an adjustment.
Fourth try.
The kitchen filled with the smell of it.
And I stopped pretending.
I put the spoon down. Hands on the counter. Eyes closed.
She was there.
Not a memory. Her presence. Moving through this kitchen the way she moved through every kitchen she ever stood in. Unhurried. Certain. Completely sure of what her hands were doing.
I stood there and let it happen.
Florida disappeared. The stove disappeared. Fifty years disappeared.
I was on the back of her scooter. The afternoon around us. The stall up ahead. The bowl waiting. Half an egg floating in the broth.
And me. Already thinking about asking for the other half. The way I always did. Whether I got it or not. That was the ritual. Not the egg. The asking.
That is what recognizing your grief triggers feels like from the inside. Not dramatic. Not planned. Just a smell and then suddenly you are six years old and everything is exactly as it was and the person you lost is right there beside you.
“Florida disappeared. The stove disappeared. Fifty years disappeared.”
Was I Perfecting The Dish Or The Memory
That is the question I kept coming back to all week.
Because I think I got it right on the first try. I think I knew it the moment I tasted it. But I kept going. Four times. Not because the soup needed more work. Because I needed more time with her.
That is a grief trigger I did not know I had.
The act of cooking her food. Standing at a stove trying to recreate something that lived in her hands. It is not just cooking. It is a way of being with her. A way of keeping the grief triggers close instead of pushing them away. A way of saying I am not ready to finish this yet.
I took a break.
I picked up my phone and texted my cousin Peprakhong in Kamphaeng Phet.
I don’t know why exactly. I was standing in my Florida kitchen thinking about my four year old self and I just needed to know. What was my favorite food when I was four years old?
She texted back almost immediately.
You mean the hard boiled egg kid?
I laughed out loud. Alone in my kitchen in Florida. Laughing at a text from Kamphaeng Phet about a four year old who apparently had very strong feelings about eggs.
That was the clarity I needed. Not the fish sauce. Not the rice flakes. The egg. The dish always came with half. I always asked for the other half. Every single time. I don’t remember if I ever got it. Peprakhong remembered the asking when I had forgotten it completely.
That is what family does. They keep the parts of you that you lose along the way. They text you back from eight thousand miles away and remind you who you were before you knew you needed to remember.
I went back to the stove.
I added the egg. Half of it in the bowl. The way it always came.
And then I asked for the other half.
Out loud. Alone in my Florida kitchen. Nobody there to hear it but me.
I laughed again.
I don’t know if she ever gave it to me. I only know I always asked.
That was enough to get it right.
When Chris Came Home
He walked in the door and I was still laughing.
He looked at me the way he looks at me when he is not sure if he missed something funny or something important. Usually with me it is both.
I told him what happened. I told him I had spent the whole day making soup four times trying to get it right. I told him I texted Peprakhong in Kamphaeng Phet to ask what my favorite food was at four years old. I told him she texted back you mean the hard boiled egg kid.
He laughed.
And then he said of course you were.
Of course I was.
Forty years together and he was not even slightly surprised that four year old Supattra in Korat was already the kid with strong opinions about eggs. He just nodded like that explained everything he had ever needed to know about me.
Maybe it does.
That is the other thing grief triggers do when you let them. They do not only bring back the sadness. They bring back the whole person. The four year old who always asked for the other half. The child who had opinions. The little girl on the back of a scooter heading toward a bowl of soup and already planning what she was going to ask for.
That child is still in here somewhere.
Writing this book is finding her again.
What I Know Now
She never measured. Not once in her life.
Fish sauce poured by feel. Lemongrass by handful. A taste, an adjustment, another taste, until it was right. The recipes lived in her hands not on paper. My job now is to stand at this Florida stove and chase what her hands knew and measure it exactly so you can make it too.
Some weeks that feels like the most important work I have ever done.
Some weeks it feels impossible.
This week it felt like both at once.
Because I was not just writing a recipe. I was learning a new grief trigger. Learning that the smell of that soup would always bring her back. That the act of making it was its own kind of conversation with her. That four tries was never about the fish sauce or the rice flakes.
It was about not wanting to put the spoon down.
It was about being the hard boiled egg kid one more time.
The soup is on the site. The story behind it is in the book.
But the grief trigger. That one is mine to keep.
I am writing it all down.
For Remi, Samantha, Jackson, Brook, Stetson, and Charlotte.
So they know what the soup meant.
So they know why NiNi kept making it four times.
So they know about the kid who always asked for the other half of the egg.
And so they know it is okay to laugh in the middle of the grief. Sometimes that is exactly what the grief needs.
What Comes Next
This is Entry 5 of Her Hands His Eyes — a memoir written in real time as I open the box.
In Entry 6 the photographs. What his eyes kept for me through twenty-four years in a closet.
