Memoir Draft

Andrea MacMichael

Food and Travel Seminar

9/30/16

Memoir Draft

            We walked into the sushi restaurant. I remember feeling reluctant, trailing a few feet behind my parents and my brother. Folding my arms against my chest, I stood, hovering quietly behind my family in the dark, low lighting of the entrance. The constant movement of waiters and waitresses in black aprons in the orange glow of the restaurant caught my attention. It seemed crowded in the restaurant with all the movement. Waiters kept arriving at tables with delicate small plates. It looked so fancy.

“Four, please”, I heard my dad tell the hostess, and already we were on our way to a booth. I plopped onto the brown leather cushion and slid against the wall, my mom sliding in beside me. My dad and my brother took over the other half of the table. The air conditioning was blasting. I pulled the sleeves of my sweatshirt over my hands and slid them comfortably underneath my butt to warm up. I was glad my mom told me to bring my sweatshirt.

“Wait, Honey maybe you should switch with Matt,” my Mom suggested. My Dad laughed, giving my brother a few elbows before switching to the inside of the booth.

 “I know, I’ve got that lefty wing that could get in the way,” he replied.

I remember sitting feeling cold and uncomfortable. My Dad, of course, pointed out to the waitress-typical Dad- that it was “the kiddies” first time eating at a sushi restaurant and that she should assure us that we would love the food. Matt and I smiled at her, inside wishing our dad would just let it go so we could order like normal.

            I stared mindlessly at the spicy shrimp tempura, the egg rolls, and miso soup on the menu. I didn’t know what anything was. Slowly I scanned the pages looking for anything that said ‘noodles’. All I wanted was bow tie noodles with marinara sauce from Flying Fish.

“Mama, I pouted, hunching back into my seat, “I don’t know what to geeet-uh.” My mouth puckered out and I turned the full-fledged ‘pouty-joe’ face on my mom. I must have been really annoying to deal with when I didn’t get what I wanted. My mom leaned in towards me, bringing her menu close to me. She pointed loosely to the page and started telling me what I would like.

“Here, honey, you would like these,” she said, talking about how yummy egg rolls are. “They’re flaky and yummy and have carrots and all kinds of good stuff rolled up in ‘em” she continued. I sat up slightly. That didn’t sound awful. I asked if there were any noodles. I was around 8 years old and I remember my dad telling me I ate so many noodles that I would turn into one. My mom turned the page to reveal Yakisoba. “Ohh” she let out, you would like these” she assured confidently. You would love these, Andrea” she repeated. She said chicken Yakisoba would be so good. I sat on the idea for a minute.

 “Okay” I said softly, wondering what type of noodles yakisobas were.

“Shoo, shoo, “my dad called from across the table, “you will love that! And you can try my veggie rolls too! I know you will like them!” he said excitedly. Feeling a little overwhelmed, I nodded.  At the time I didn’t like fish or seafood, and I though he was going to make me eat the raw stuff.

“Okay,” I said, quietly wondering if veggie rolls had seaweed or raw fish. I didn’t like new things. My brother was sitting across the table with his grey Michigan sweatshirt on. It was the same on he always wore during football season, and he had the hood pulled over his head. I stared at him until he looked down from the game on TV. His face mirrored how I felt. We sat, snuggled in our sweatshirts with hands tucked underneath us. We didn’t like new things.

We hardly ever went out to eat, but when we did, I always got my pasta. Bow tie noodles and marinara sauce was the most amazing thing in the whole wide world. Flying Fish was my favorite restaurant ever. Every once and a while we would go to Sweet Lorraine’s and I would get the oodles of noodles. I loved those because they were really buttery and came with soft carrots. Noodles were just my favorite. Matt always got either fish and chips or a cheeseburger with fries. We were such creatures of habit, because we never changed our order.

When the food came, my brother and I were presented with heaping plates of thick noodles smothered in a brown sauce with diced chicken and broccoli, and one brown, crispy egg roll each. My parents shared a pretty rectangular platter decorated with colorful slivers of fish resting on rice and small seaweed rolls. I searched around anxiously for a fork, finally deciding to copy my parents as they unwrapped long wood chopsticks from a paper covering. The chopsticks slipped between my fingers clumsily. I tried to pinch them together and pick up a noodle, but the slimy noodles kept slipping through and falling back onto my plate. I spent a few minutes fishing around with my noodles, managing to get one or two into my mouth.

“Here Shoo Shoo,” my dad said, giving me two asparagus rolls and his pristine dish full of dark soy sauce. I slowly placed my chopsticks on either side of the mysterious seaweed roll and brought it up to my mouth. But it slipped as I applied pressure and quickly I hunched forward, mouth wide and tongue extended in an attempt to catch the falling roll, but it splashed into the basin of soy sauce. I felt my face getting hot. I wanted a fork. I felt so awkward and unsure of how to eat my food, my hand longing to handle the metal stem of a fork. I was no good at eating like this. Across the table my brother made use of his fingers when no one was looking, only using his chopsticks for eating the chunks of chicken. My mom beside me was calmly, chopsticks resting comfortably between her fingers, dunking pieces of sushi into soy sauce and raising them expertly into her mouth without so much as a stray drip or fumble. Tired of struggling and feeling frustrated, I stabbed one chopstick into the center of the soggy asparagus roll that had partially unraveled with the fall, and practically threw it into my mouth. My dad was calmly trying to motion to me so I could mimic how he held the chopsticks, but I had given up all interest in the conventional and continued with the stabbing method and my own clumsy, inexperienced grip. Like soccer tryouts, I tried to mask my inexperience. I tried to blend in with the crowd and not be noticed for what I wasn’t doing correctly. I liked two restaurants and that’s where I was comfortable.

I remember that trip to the sushi restaurant as the longest, hottest, most uncomfortable meal of my childhood. I liked chicken stir fry, grilled steak and potatoes, pasta marinara and oodles of noodles. Dishes from home and dishes from my two favorite restaurants, eaten with normal utensils. As a kid I dreaded the “how about this” or the “you will like this” and the “let’s try this” I hated being pushed and then realizing that I agreed with them afterwards. I was a quiet kid with too many worries, angry that my parents tried to push me and that I had to feel uncomfortable.

Finally, we left the restaurant after what seemed like forever. “That was so good, wasn’t it? my dad said.

“Did you like it?” my mom asked. Feeling the warm breeze rush past me as we stepped back outside, I replied,

“Yeah, it was fine. It was actually pretty good” I stated, my love of food masked slightly by my reluctance to admit I liked a new thing.

“See, we knew you would like it,” my parents said. Somehow they were always right.