‘What should I eat for dinner this evening?’
This is what lingers in my head from the moment when I leave work until I enter the kitchen. Since I changed my job and started living alone, I had to invest my time in what I had not put much weight on. One of them is cooking for myself.
One evening, I couldn’t eat till late. I didn’t want a good feed or the same side dishes I ate the day before. I looked through the cupboard for anything to eat, and found a can of stir-fried kimchi. A simple and easy-to-eat menu just came to mind. It was kimchi fried rice. I wanted to enjoy a delicious dish, so I looked for a recipe for it on the Internet. As there were all the necessary ingredients at home and the recipe was simple, I could start cooking right away.
First, I oiled the frying pan and cut the green onions that I had put in the freezer. When I began to gently stir-fry the green onion to make green onion oil, the oil spattered in all directions like a firecracker. I turned down the gas in a hurry, but the sound of moisture from the green onions meeting the oil was noisy. I quickly put the tuna and stirred it, adding soy sauce. But the soy sauce boiled suddenly, and the second firecracker show began; it was rather bombing. Surprised, I turned off the stove, but the bombing left black marks all over the kitchen.
When the frying pan cooled down, I almost gave up and just mixed stir-fried kimchi, red pepper powder, and other ingredients, adding cooked rice to them. The final dish I made was very different from the photos on the Internet. I was even afraid to taste it, so I started cleaning the kitchen first.
From the tile walls to the sink, I wiped again and again, washing the dishcloth several times. It was only after the kitchen returned to its original state that I was able to have a bite. When I checked the time, about an hour and a half had passed since I started cooking. The cold kimchi fried rice tasted better than I thought, perhaps because of hunger.
When I was about to eat, I remembered Dad’s request to call him often. So I made a phone call.
“Dad.”
“Oh, dear. Did you have dinner?”
I had to say yes. Because it was too late for dinner, I knew what I would be told if I said I was about to eat. I could hear my mother and sister talking and laughing from the phone. I felt like I was in one space. But the moment I hung up, I came back to my room. The cold kimchi fried rice looked too poor, compared with the warm one that my mother had cooked for me.
‘Has Mom also experienced such a firecracker show in the kitchen?’
‘Does she, too, cook dishes for our family, going through unexpected bombings?’
Now I look into my mother’s labors that were hidden in her dining table. Even if we don’t recognize her efforts, every time she quietly put her time and care in preparing meals. In the meantime, however, I used to rest or did what I wanted to do. I took her efforts for granted and enjoyed the meals after paying for them with the simple words, “Thank you.”
If I had known that setting the table would be this hard, I would have sat at the table right after Mom called me for dinner. I should have enjoyed even ordinary dishes without complaining. Why didn’t I do that before?
I miss mom-cooked meals. No, I miss MOM, who has made home meals with her love.