That Incident

FIFTEEN

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𝘚𝘞𝘌𝘌𝘛 𝘔𝘌𝘔𝘖𝘙𝘐𝘌𝘚.

I was so fed up with everything. I couldn't understand what this Melissa of a girl had said. It was so unbelievable.

"Ughh!!" I screamed in the sitting room stomping my feet loudly.

What was wrong with people? Why was I so upset by her comment.

"Lota, what is it?" My mother asked peeping from her work table. She had been typing since I got home from school. I had come out from my room to get water and maybe watch the television with hope that I'll fall asleep. It was 1am in the morning.

Insomnia was something else.

"You can't sleep?" She asked as I tuned to the next channel. I had tried watching Nat Geo Wild. There were airing a documentary about platypus. Platypus were semiaquatic egg laying mammals, how fascinating.

"Yes." I mumbled.

There was a brief silence.

"Your grandparents are back from the pilgrimage." She said.

I got reminded that my maternal grandparents went to Rome for a pilgrimage. They felt like strangers to me.

"Oh wow! How great." I said rolling my eyes in sarcasm.

"They're coming over for dinner on Saturday tomorrow. Good news, I'm cooking dinner....oh wait, it's even today. I didn't realize today is Saturday already." She said beaming from ear to ear. She hoped the news cheered me up as she peeped at my face closely to be sure.

This was not cheering me up actually. I hated the idea. I loved the idea there was going to be a bountiful meal because whenever people were visiting for dinner. My mother cooked a lot of scrumptious dishes especially when her parents came around.

Varieties of cuisines, I would say.

I had only one problem. My grandparents! I couldn't describe them properly.

But if I was asked in a interview:

Interviewer: Describe your grandparents in three sentences?

And I would probably say:

Selfish fat cats who didn't give a care about your happiness.

Full time imposers who thought they could manage your life.

Staunch Catholics.

"They badly want to see you. I thought you could also cook that dish you learnt from the Girls Camp you went to two years ago. What's the name again? A cartoon character was named after it. A..."

I knew what she was talking about.

"Ratatouille. The French dish." I said.

"Your grandfather would love it and it's a perfect meal cause he is vegetarian. Just write all the list of what you would need for the stew. I have to go to the market to get flour to make puff puff for the dinner." She said with glee. I could understand her excitement. She had not seen them for a pretty long time.

They communicated with her only because of me as she had said.

They loved me, my mother always said. Something I found hard to believe. I didn't even believe I loved myself.

I thought about cooking Ratatouille for dinner. Past memories of the very first time I had cooked it after I returned from the girls holiday camp. I could recall I was on a break from the junior secondary school exams we had written.

I was so productive that period: going for camps, sewing classes and offering lessons to kindergarten kids for a reasonable pay. The sewing class was a failure. I guess I wasn't born for it or probably not so into it like teaching.

Teaching the kids made me consider being a teacher. I would say I was still confused of what my future profession was going to be.

I could recall writing down the list of what I needed for the ratatouille. First thing I did when I returned from camp. I had given it to my dad who usually handled going to the market.

It was a way of getting my mother to rest. She was a real workaholic.

"Medium zucchini, bell peppers, eggplants..what's zucchini?" My dad had said calling out the list of things I had scribbled down.

I giggled.

"It's a vegetable." I replied.

"Ohh...you know foreign things now, Lotachi." He said laughing.

I pretty much missed those days. I could remember how we sat at the dining eating the hearty meal after cooking.

The hot spicy stew tossed with pasta and the chilly cans of Coca Cola that accompanied it. They were beautiful memories. The beautiful laughter.

Moments where I once thought we were inseparable. We were going to be like that forever, I had always thought.

We were going to make more good memories like this, I could remember saying to myself.

It was all but a thing of the past.