A Complicated Love: Family and Food
Reflecting on this past Mother’s Day, I couldn't help but think about my own relationship with my mother. It mirrors my relationship with food—complicated.
My relationship with food has always been a struggle. Some people eat out of necessity, but that's definitely not me. With certain foods, I feel memories, guilt, shame, and joy, sometimes all in one bite.
Take Banh Xeo, for example—a crispy, savory Vietnamese crepe eaten with herbs like a lettuce wrap. Eating it brings a flood of emotions. It's a family specialty that brings joy and community, yet as a teenager, I felt shame eating it. I hated the smell of grease and fish sauce lingering on me afterward, making me embarrassed. I also remember my mother, exhausted from hours of cooking, telling me to eat while she couldn’t anymore, only to remind me ten minutes later to watch my weight.
Watching my weight and navigating the cultural divide was a constant force in my life. My mother put me on my first diet when I was five years old. Starting school exposed me to American food. Eating school lunches like chicken fried steak with mashed potatoes made me feel normal, eating things that everyone else was eating, instead of hiding the “weird smelly food” that kids would make fun of me for. Outside the house, I ate American food and felt American; inside the house, I felt the culture of being Vietnamese, hiding both from each other.
Food as Stories
My mother shared her stories while she cooked—stories of community and the family she left behind, tales of the journey to the States and the refugee camps where food was a means of survival. She would save one bowl of rice and starve herself to feed her family, never taking food for granted. After immigrating to the States, there was always food on the table, even when my parents couldn’t afford it.
It wasn’t until I was an adult that I realized my parents didn't show affection through words. Once, I asked my mother why they never said “I love you” to each other. She replied, “Americans say ‘I love you’ all the time. One day they love each other, the next they hate each other and throw them away. Words are interchangeable, so they don’t matter.” For her, love was shown through actions, specifically through food. Instead of saying "I love you," it was more like, “Have you eaten?, “I’ll make you something to eat.”
This complicated idea of food persisted. As food is felt as affection. Unconsciously, I turned to food for comfort, often eating emotionally because I felt so alone. Eating when someone made me sad, or mad, or frustrated. I didn’t talk about my emotions, I suppressed everything and, I drowned them down with food and later on, alcohol.
I later began to find my own relationship with food, learning what made my body feel good and what didn’t. I discovered that eating meat wasn't good for me. I’ve been wanting and thinking about being vegetarian to the point where I don’t eat meat except for when I see my parents.
But when I go home, my mother makes Banh Xeo, pho (a beef soup), goi (a salad), and a plethora of other dishes in one sitting to make up for lost time. In her eyes, she's showering me with affection. As I look at her and eat the food, I wonder, if I tell her the truth and not eat meat, will she take it as a sign of rejection? Will she think I’m losing my culture if I don’t eat traditional dishes like pho or bo kho? Will it be a bigger burden if I tell her so she would feel that she needs to make extra dishes? Even For Mother’s day, when we all tell her not to cook the family will bring something, she makes Bun Thit Nuong, (meat with noodles).
