Related Posts

Here’s a Watermelon For Your Trouble…

A few days ago, I went to help a friend move some furniture at his mom’s house. She’d recently had her hardwood floors uncovered, after years of hiding under carpeting and some of the larger furniture was still sitting in the back rooms.

After getting all of the furniture into place, she served us a few pieces of lumpia—she’s Filipino—and as we were about to leave she hands me a watermelon. Um, okay. A handshake would have been fine but a watermelon works to.

And this made me think of this Asian family I went to visit one time. It was back during my high school years and I knew this girl from computer class, Kay. We became lab partners and also became friends during that time. My friend, the same one mentioned above, knew her sister, Jane, who was a year older than us.

On occasion we’d drive Kay home after school, since she lived in the same area as all of us. What we found odd was that they were very secretive about letting anyone in or around their house. Basically, Kay would have us pull up in front of the house next door, jump out of the car and make a mad dash into her house—telling us to take off. And, of course, this intrigued us. What the hell was up with her house?

This continued on and off many times, until one day the garage door was open when we pulled up. Inside we could see Kay’s mom coming towards us. In Kay’s eye’s we could see nothing but panic and although she tried her best to shoo us away, we’d already been seen and invited in—into the house that probably no one had ever been in.

The mom was blind, hard of hearing and very wobbly on her feet. In fact, she tipped over a few times just walking up to door leading into the house. Kay kept apologizing and telling her mom, “no mom, they don’t want to come in”. But her mom wouldn’t hear of it and before we knew it we were being led through this basement room, jam-packed full of boxes and clothing and into their kitchen. That’s pretty much as far as we got, because Kay wouldn’t let us get any farther into the house.

The kitchen had papers stuck to all of the cabinets, little religious sayings and prayers. The house was a bit cluttered, but they explained that the mom was very stubborn and wanted to be self-sufficient. She wouldn’t take medication for her various conditions and got angry when people would try and help her.

The mom asked us to sit down and have some soup, and so we all obliged and sat down. Now, I knew from the outset that I wasn’t eating anything and told them that I had food allergies. So she served us some bowls of soup and immediately Kay and her sister said that we don’t have to eat it, which even further made me nervous about ingesting anything. So I clinked the bowl a few times with the spoon, swooshed the soup around in the bowl but never actually put any in my mouth. While we were all “eating”, the mom began cutting up fruit and basically pulling everything out of her cupboards to give to us. She handed us cans of soup, cans of soda, fruits, and anything else that was in reach. Although I tried to pass, there was no hearing it and in the end walked away with a grocery bag of food. The sisters just kept apologizing and telling us to go along with it.

After quite some time, we decided to leave and the sisters couldn’t have been happier. They got us to the door within seconds and practically shoved us out the door to the car. In their eyes you could see them saying, “run while you have the chance”.

I think their reaction was more of an embarrasment than anything else. I think they didn’t want their friends to really know about their mom and for the most part, the mom was kept inside the house away from people. It’s just unfortunate. The mom passed away about four years ago, but this story is something I still remember vividly and when my friend and I talk about it, we laugh.

Tags: food, friends, watermelon, asian

 Print This Post
  Link to this Entry