Almond Cake

It’s been a week since the little outburst with my dad, and since then, all I can really say is, well, my dad doesn’t give me shit about never doing dishes as I stand in front of him washing plates.

So what happened exactly last week?

After I got home from work, I decided to wash a bunch of dishes. My parents weren’t home, and there was a huge pile of them in the kitchen sink. My mom had baked four almond cakes and cooked a bunch of other shit for some relatives coming over later in the evening. I had never seen these relatives; they’re from the other side of the country and every time they do visit my other relatives, my relatives always have trouble remembering who they were.

I figured my parents were out doing grocery shopping, so I decided to give them a hand and clean things up. I also gathered all the Tupperware that I had been using each day for lunch at work. I had a habit of letting a week’s worth of Tupperware build up in places like my hot car, and so they would all get pretty nasty. Nonetheless, I’d always end up cleaning it.

So I was almost done cleaning everything when my parents returned. They walked in the kitchen carrying grocery bags, and my dad, seeing me wash dishes, told me I needed to stop being a disgusting slob and start washing my dishes, especially my Tupperware. (Disgusting slob is only a rough Vietnamese translation of what he actually said, and the ridicule of the actual term gets lost in translation.) At first, I took it silently, because that’s how good Vietnamese families would usually work, but, still suppressing my anger, I retorted, “Well, there, I’m washing my dishes right now, so you don’t need to tell me to wash the dishes.”

He paused, probably to try to translate what I said into Vietnamese. Whether he understood or not probably wouldn’t have mattered anyway. He continued to call me a disgusting slub.

I wasn’t too sure how to answer, “Why can’t you do the dishes every once in a while?” as I stood there doing the dishes. That’s when I snapped and cried out, “Fine! If you can’t appreciate me actually doing the dishes, then do them yourself!”

Unfortunately, I was pretty much done with cleaning all the dishes, so what I said probably didn’t carry the dramatic power that I wanted it to. So, in a manner that is now a little funny to me when I look back, I dirtied two or three clean dishes by slamming them against the floor with all my fucking strength.

The dishes were Tupperware. Plastic. They didn’t break. Unsatisfied that I couldn’t make the scene anymore dramatic by making it loud and noisy, I stormed out of the kitchen.

(Did I mention that I had green face paint on, with the words “GO ROBOTS!” written across my forehead? This just adds to the ridiculousness of the scene.)

And that’s how I ended up in Santana Row, the rich people land of the Silicon Valley. (I washed my face before leaving my house.) While wandering down its streets, I reflected on what had just happened. I could’ve made it so much worse, but I didn’t. In the pile of clean dishes, there was a lot of breakable shit, but I avoided grabbing them. I couldn’t bring myself to do what I would do two years ago. I didn’t break shit because I knew things were fixed, and I wanted to keep things that way. A tennis racket (racket—not ball) was probably the last thing I would ever smash (and it’s the kind of smashing you do when you want to break shit, not the kind that tennis players do to unsuccessful lobs).

I did not mess things up, I reassured myself. My parents have taken far worse from me, and they have always recovered. This miraculous unconditional love between my parents and me, it has saved us many times, and I don’t think it’ll ever stop its superhero work.

I knew that even though my relatives would eat a lot of all the food my parents had been preparing, there’d still be at least one almond cake in the fridge waiting for me.

---
“Christmas Carol”
Written on December 1st, 2007 (Excerpted and Revised)

After having arrived home from school later in November, I opened my garage door to discover that my mom’s car was sitting in there. I stepped out of my car into the cold chilly garage air, gazed over her car, and rolled my eyes. She should be at work, but she’s probably having another one of her whiny bitchy headaches, I thought to myself. I stepped inside the house, not caring enough to take off my shoes as I treaded across the carpet.

My mom was in the kitchen doing what she always loved doing: baking, even though anything she ever baked hardly ever turned out well. She greeted me and went on to explain that she had a bad headache in the morning, just as I had suspected, but she was now better. I gave her my aloof thumbs-up-but-I-don’t-really-care look, and I headed upstairs to change into my work clothes.

I came back downstairs and sat down at the kitchen table to shovel in a quick meal. My mom was stirring a bowl of batter beside me. No words were spoken. Just silence, the low humming of the oven fan, the cinnamon smell of the batter, and the overbearing, smothering warmth of the kitchen.

I glanced over at the recipe on the table, and saw that it was titled “Almond Cake.” Almond cake was the only thing that my mom ever knew how to bake correctly, and it always turned out delicious.

I broke the silence and piped up, “Are you making almond cake?”

“No, I’m just making pound cake,” she answered.

I sighed. Pound cake was just the almond cake recipe minus the almonds, but it always turned out like shit somehow.

“Why, do you want some almond cake?” she inquired with a faint smile.

“Nah, it’s okay,” and I went back to my food.

My mom seemed to ignore my answer. “I think we have a bag of almonds somewhere in the cupboard,” and she started digging around the kitchen. She recovered an old jar of Planters salted almonds and got too excited. “Can these work?”

“No,” I retorted sharply. “It has to be sliced almonds.”

My mom paused thoughtfully before venturing in, “Can I put these in a blender then?”

I rolled my eyes and shook my head. “Whatever. Just make pound cake. I don’t care.” I was sorry that I had brought it up. I was always sorry to ever try bringing anything up to my mom. I gulfed down the rest of my lunch and headed out to my garage, muttering “bye” as the door closed behind me.

I came back home at 10 that night to a dark, cool kitchen. The smell of sweet cake was now only a remnant of earlier that day. My parents had gone to bed, and the heater shut down a long time ago. I turned on the kitchen lights, and the humming of the refrigerator attracted me to it. I opened it to rummage for food, but I froze when my eyes fell on what was lying at the bottom: It was pound cake with a layer of sliced golden almonds resting on top. It was almond cake.

I stood so long in front of the open refrigerator that the cold was now seeping into my bone marrow and into my head. I felt like I was no longer thinking, and like a robot, I lifted the almond cake from its pan and turned around and held it over the garbage can with one hand. I paused.

I could not comprehend its presence before me. Why was it there? Because of the way I treated her for the last several months, I didn’t deserve this almond cake. Yet, some kind of love drove her to bake it for me anyway. It was a mom’s unconditional love toward her son. I had spent the last several months trying to break it, never having believed in it. I couldn’t believe in it because I didn’t understand it. How could I ever understand it? To even begin to understand it, I had to think like a parent, but I refused to let myself get into the mindset of a parent. I wasn’t supposed to.

So what could I do to understand the damn almond cake sitting right in my hand before my eyes? It was definitely there in front of me; I could feel it. Maybe, I didn’t have to understand its existence, but I could believe in it. (Yeah, I know, I would be dumb to believe that the thing sitting in front of me didn’t exist.) And maybe, by believing in it, I would one day finally begin to understand its existence.

Using my other hand I reached up into the cupboard and grabbed a plate. I laid the cake on it and grabbed a fork and a knife. As I ate the almond cake, I felt my humanity rushing back to me.
---

It’s been a week since my little outburst with my dad, and since then, things have been great as always.