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“I don’t really think about stuff like that,” Shane replies in interviews, his lips wooden at the words.
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Shane and being haafu, 2nd gen, and Asian.
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Bookmark Notes:
“The worst part,” Yuna Hollander was saying, “was the food.”
Across from her, Ilya was nodding thoughtfully, two glasses of wine deep. They had already finished dinner, and the empty plates had been sitting neglected for at least 20 minutes now. The conversation just didn’t seem to hit a lull for them to get up and take care of the dishes; Shane was starting to feel antsy, thinking about the pasta sauce slowly crusting stuck on the plates, getting harder and harder to scrub away.
Ilya had been joking about first moving to the US, how shocked he was at how big everything was; the size of the cars, the size of the grocery stores, the size of parking lots. Yuna nodded, eyes shut in solidarity, at all of these observations, and launched into her own stories of when she first moved to Canada: hugs, bizarre questions about China, how many yappy dogs were out and about all the time.
“It was so lonely, you know,” his mother said, a little buzzed and contemplative. “My mom, she was so sad, she couldn’t find anything, not even miso. All there was was soy sauce and a sushi restaurant. There was one guy, by the time Shane was born, who started running an import business, buying stuff from Japan and selling it from his home. But before that, well…
“It was like I could never eat my favourite foods again. No more curry rice, no more korokke, no more miso-fried fish, no taiyaki or dango or any kind of wagashi, not even miso soup! I think I missed miso soup the most. We used to have it every day. I didn’t know I loved it so much until it was gone.”
Ilya hummed, nodding. “I know this feeling,” he said, “I miss grechka more every day. Just buckwheat. I did not think I cared for it before.” Shane hadn’t thought much about how Ilya and his mother had this in common. Immigrants, the both of them. The term didn’t seem to fit with Ilya in his head, for some reason.
“Once,” Yuna said, beginning to smile, “My mom went to the store and saw this stuff, instant ramen, you know it’s everywhere now, but it was new then, for Canada. And she got so excited, she bought three cups for us and brought it home, her face was splitting open with her smile. I’d never seen her so happy.”
“She made it for us for dinner, she poured in those cup noodles and set it out for us. And we laughed, since it was a western cup noodle, and it tasted nothing like real ramen. Honestly, it was bad,” Yuna shook her head, amused. “Afterwards, my dad set his chopsticks down, and said very seriously – ‘Mother, never buy this again,’ and she never did.”
Shane had never heard that story. The image was vivid in his mind; his grandma and grandpa, young and worn down, Yuna with her hair short, wrinkling their nose at the flimsy styrofoam Mr. Noodles cup. His grandpa laying down an order – no more trying at what we can’t have.
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