老客房

It’s 6:43am. I’ve come down to make breakfast after drawing since sunrise, but I already hear plates clattering down the hall. No matter how early I wake, Yeye is up before me. I’m greeted with the smell of a feast: pineapple cakes, fried dough twists, a bowl of milk, and eggs. Always the eggs. "A strong body has to have eggs!" Yeye would say when handing them to me. Sometimes their boiled, sometimes fried in sesame oil, other times they’re scrambled. The scrambled ones are my favourite – made with olive oil and fresh cracked pepper. Yeye used chopsticks instead of a spatula, which gives it this texture I can never replicate myself. But most days, l’d shove this down and head out to school without another thought.

When spring comes, seeds germinate over the water kettle in a perfect microclimate of moisture and heat. As they germinate, yeye puts them in planters and places them out on the heater vents. We’d cover them with plastic like in a greenhouse as sprouts shoot out their secondary leaves.

As the weather warms, the kitchen becomes a cornucopia of fruits and vegetables. Cucumbers, beans and tomatoes spill over baskets and scatter on the counter tops. They’ll get sorted into bags and given away to unsuspecting neighbours. When the chives get cut, nainai and yeye spend hours here sitting on plastic folding stools sorting and cleaning them.

When night falls, turning on the hidden light strips gives the space a completely different feel. I sometimes work down here to escape, knowing everyone else upstairs can’t hear me while they’re sleeping. I’d pull the screen door wide open to let summer breezes blow for some relief from the muggy heat trapped upstairs. It feels like I’m working in a designer mansion on my own private island.

In the fall, the harvest is replaced by starches: radish, mountain yam, sweet potatoes and pumpkins. Radish especially becomes the sole focus of the family. We’ll spend a November afternoon pulling them out of the ground. They get washed in giant steel tubs and peeled to reveal sweet crunchy flesh. Most gets cut and salted to be used as pickles throughout the winter. The leaves are hung to dry, then hydrated later to be used in soups. The garden falls into a slumber as November rain turns into snow, and the whole cycle happens once more.