In July the editors at Decor Maine Magazine asked me to write a piece for their Kitchen Issue. What I sent them appeared in this month’s print issue. You can also read it here below. I hope you enjoy it.
The most practical place our family ever lived was a modest two-floor, two-bedroom apartment where the first floor was mostly kitchen. Stove, cabinets, and fridge dominated one wall, and an island in the middle stretched half the length of the apartment with a sink and enough counter space for this mother to cook for her family of five.
When I stood at the island, rear end inches from the stove, hands busy sudsing dishes or rinsing out the juicer, a glance to my right allowed me to assess danger levels as my three boys (ages two to eight) sparred and tumbled in their ninja suits in front of the picture window that, along with a chair and love- seat, defined the living room. At the other end of the island, a small table stood in front of the back door. Both areas doubled as entryways, but the kitchen was the main event, command central.
In those days, a command center was essential. Food had become our biggest hope for getting our middle son well. After two six-week inpatient stays for chemotherapy and a third for the bone marrow transplant, Chan was looking almost as well, and certainly as happy, as any six-year-old kid could be, (if you ignored the steroid-chubby cheeks and shadows under his eyes).
Freed from hospital constraints, he could at last run and tussle with his brothers, the only visible evidence of his cancer a white tube emerging from a small hole above his heart, looped and carefully affixed with a strong metal clip to his red Manchester United shirt. This arrangement kept it from getting pulled out during all the rough and tumble play.
After surrendering completely to a western medical approach eight months previous, we were now left with food as the only aspect of his treatment that felt under our control.
AML M6 is a form of leukemia so rare, the doctors in Thailand who diagnosed it couldn’t give us odds on his recovery. They could only tell us it was serious and that we would need to leave immediately from our home beside the Mekong River to seek treatment in the US.
Days after diagnosis, we flew across the Pacific to begin a life orbiting around Seattle Children’s Hospital. On nights I stayed with Chan (hospital rules: only one adult each night—a sudden end to the family bed we had always shared), my husband read all he could find about the best diets for cancer. From among so much conflicting advice, he decided steamed broccoli and vegetable juices were the winners and showed me which pressure cooker and Champion Juicer to purchase.
Command central was where we kept the pill organizers. After the transplant, Chan required 36 pills per day. At age six, he was an expert at not only watching the blood drawn from the vein in the crook of his elbow while keeping up a lively conversation with whichever new phlebotomist was working, but also at swallowing pills. Cheerfully drinking bitter juices became yet another of his superpowers.
It all seemed to be working. The play, the laughter, the broccoli, the love. Chan was strong and healthy. The doctors were impressed.
Then one day as I was chopping more carrots and celery for juicing, the phone rang.
“Hello, this is Crystal.” Our contact nurse from the Hutchinson Center. “I have some news for you.”
“Yes?” I waited, not knowing whether to hope or worry in that tiny space of time before her next sentence. I heard a delay, long enough for an inhale.
“Chan’s last draw revealed a high concentration of blast cells.”
I felt the familiar impatience and discouragement from not knowing how to interpret these medical facts forever being reported to me. WBC, RBC, platelets, blasts. Preoccupied at home with trying to keep a toddler, a deadly illness, and the rising fear in my heart all under control, keeping up on numerical blood count ranges was beyond my mental, emotional, and energetic capacity. “What does that mean?” I am ashamed to recall that I didn’t try to mask my irritation.
Another pause. Longer this time. “It means the cancer is back. It means you and your husband need to come in to meet with the doctors.”
It meant, we found out the next day, there was nothing more they could do for Chan. He had, they said when pressed, no more than a few months to live.
The best they could offer was to “make the rest of his life comfortable.” This, we found out, again by pressing them for specififics, translated to transfusions and morphine and death in their good, clean hospital for my sweet, strong boy.
That night, my husband convinced me this was not a good plan. The next day, we obtained the doctors’ blessings to return to Thailand, where we would fight for Chan’s life with meditation, vitamins, love, family and food.
***
A week later, we were back in our home on the banks of the Mekong River. There, in the local style, our kitchen consisted of no more than a pair of burners connected to a propane tank, small refrigerator, slab of tree trunk and massive cleaver, bamboo steamer for cooking sticky rice, and cabinet for dishes. Outside the back door stood a sink that drained out onto the cement floor and across to the gutter that ran the perimeter of the yard. The kitchen was minimal because people there rarely kept food stored at home. Instead, food was purchased fresh from the morning market at the center of the village each day.
The market opened at 2 a.m. Our neighbors on each side rose soon after midnight to prepare their carts and wares. Every afternoon, the grandfather on one side of us sat beside a small fire in the outdoor kitchen, puffing on a fat homemade cigar and slowly turning a pig’s head over the smoke, while the grandmother ground pork and stirred meat and spices in a huge wok over the stove. In the dark of early morning, they snipped apart the sausage links strewn from the rafters and carried them up the dark street.
The young couple and mother-in-law on the other side of us rose at 2 a.m. to load and roll their metal cart up the lane, leaning together to push it up the hill, huge woks clanking against the propane tank required to boil the oil to fry and puff the hundreds of triangles of rolled-out dough into hot greasy mouthfuls of chewy air for customers.
Our first morning back home, after hearing the neighbors leave, I dozed under the mosquito net until the boys stirred beside me a little before sunrise. Waking quickly, they began their morning routine of cuddles and laughter and urging me and daddy out of bed.
“Let’s go, Mamma! I want pa tong ko!” The doughnuts.
“I want num dtao hoo!” Homemade and heavily sweetened soy milk.
“I want sang kaya!” Coconut cream jellies steamed in banana leaves.
So many foods they loved and had missed for nearly a year, the knew now waited only blocks away. At the market we walked together along muddy dirt paths where women presided over stalls illuminated by strands of naked light bulbs. Thick, dark squares of pumpkin bars glistened with a sheen of coconut cream. Heaps of ruby red mangosteen bristled dark spines like strange sea creatures. Pyramids of banana leaf packets steamed out aromas of wild mushrooms, Mekong fish and kafir lime leaves. Servings of stew rich with gamey meat, dark leaves, and orange jungle roots sloshed awkward against the constraints of rubber bands expertly twisted around the simple plastic bags that held them.
It seemed everyone we met beamed at us, shouting bright greetings after our absence. Nine months is a long time to be away after years of regular visits to their stalls. The vendors smiled at all of us, but especially at Chan. I must have looked like a ghost then, 20 pounds lighter than when we’d left, lips cracked from forgetting to drink water. It was as if the strength that went into Chan’s body came out of mine. I know by the way they beamed at him and then glanced at me, they saw it too.
Women grabbed Chan’s shoulders, holding him at arm’s length and squeezing tight. “Kengleng dee, nah?” So strong, you are, yes? Their unapologetic touch, bold words, so much encouragement, kindness felt like islands of rest I clung to in a rushing river of worry. They say he looks good. Maybe he’s going to be OK.
And whatever we bought, whether it was a half kilo of peanuts scooped out of a hot wok, a dozen skewers of pork sizzling over hot coals, or a bag of doughnuts snatched from boiling oil, every vendor added something extra as they handed us our purchases, gifts of nourishment, gifts that seemed to say, We are so happy for you. Keep going. Don’t give up. Eat. Be well. ▪
Catharine H. Murray 