Essay 2

Do you relate to one of the characters? How? Why?

In the story “Coming Home Again” I can relate to the character Chang-rae Lee in the fact that both our families were the same just different cultures. He describes how all he wanted to do was watch his mother cook in the kitchen. My grandmother was a little but stubborn Italian woman who had a passion for cooking. She would spend all day cooking to make sure everyone in her family was fed. For family holidays she wouldn’t let anyone cook, so we would all end up at there house. Together Chang-rae and I began to see that there was something going on in the kitchen and we wanted to see and learn. As you know every time you have a dinner everyone ends up in the kitchen. Chang-rae and I have similar stories in the fact that we were trying to explore our curiosities but were being pushed away to help us learn the importance of life other than being in the kitchen.
When I was about seven years old I started to love watching my grandmother cook in the kitchen. It was amazing what she could do with food and it looked impossible to learn. She would get mad if I was in there because I was too small and could get hurt. There was times where I got in her way because she was so short that she wouldn’t see me and almost fall. I watched everything that she did from the first step of the recipe to the last step. There were times I would become frustrated because I thought she didn’t want me there to help her or learn how she did things. Chang-rae also showed an interest in his mothers cooking and also was shown the cold shoulder for being in the kitchen. In the story Chang-rae mentioned that he would sneak back into the kitchen to get a peak of what she was doing and with me I would move on to a barstool and watch over my grandmothers shoulder.
As our family got bigger there were more family dinners and the house would be full of Italians. No one else but me showed an interest in my grandmother’s cooking, everyone just enjoyed eating it. My grandmother would light up when she would have the whole family at her house from children, grand children and friends. We would have dinners every weekend to keep the family close.
Being the first child and grand child born I did receive the special treatment and I was allowed not to eat many things if I didn’t like them but with my grandmother you couldn’t get away with that. You had to finish everything on your plate or you were in big trouble. With out her pushing me like that I would have become a very picky child. Chang-rae was also the first child born and we can relate to being the number one prize. I think that has to do with why I love to cook and loved learning new things.
Chang-rae was sent to boarding school when he was fifteen years old which impacted his life and relationship with his mother. Not only was education important in his family but also in mine. You were expected to succeed in school and career choices and never fail. I was never allowed to get anything lower than a B and if I did my grandmother would never be happy. She just wanted us to have a good life and experience everything out in the world.
As I grew up the memories of cooking in the kitchen with my grandma became more important because she was getting older and was becoming ill. Chang-rae’s mother had cancer of the stomach and my grandmother just became too weak to enjoy food. I use to cook meals for her and she could hardly finish but the enjoyment of her face watching me in the kitchen was enough to satisfy me. There were times where you could hear a silent whisper of her trying to correct my steps but I would just nod my head and not argue with a sick and stubborn Italian. It was my senior year in high school and the weekend of my eighteenth birthday when my world changed. I was getting ready for a huge birthday party and there were lots of things to do, especially preparing my food menu. Even though it was my birthday I wanted to show everyone what I have learned over the years. The night before my party around 1:30am we got a call from my grandpa saying my grandmother was in the hospital. We all jumped out of bed and drove down. I remember seeing my grandmother lying in the bed sick as a dog and white as a ghost. I had a gut feeling something was going to happen. She opened up her eyes and told me she loved me and that was the last thing she said. She passed away ten years ago on my eighteenth birthday and my world was over.
In Chang-rae’s story and mine we related in the fact that we had two people we loved very much who were trying to teach us the importance of life even though it revolved around a kitchen and food. We had the best time learning the tricks of how each culture cooks there food by watching the pros. Chang-rae’s mom wanted him to succeed in a career that offered him a better life and my grandmother wanted me to carry on the tradition of the closeness of Italian families. Trying to explore our curiosities of what was so important about cooking in the kitchen led both of us to have great lives even though we were being pushed away.