Food in the Time of COVID (2)

The following blog entry is an adaptation of a letter I sent to my dear friend Paul Mengedoth (a.k.a. Ah-Deef)

photo credit: Sandor Bodo

My family lives in Providence, RI in a two-family home on the “East Side” of the City. Historically, this is widely (and accurately) considered the wealthy part of town. There are pockets of homes within a stone’s throw of my house that are architecturally stunning. Our home is hardly a showpiece and we bought it cheap because of all the work that needed to be done. Seventeen years later, it’s still a work in progress, but it’s truly a nice house with enough New England charm to pass the straight face test when I tell people it was built in 1900. There’s a shared basement. The first floor is a separate unit. Then the top two floors are the other, larger unit.

When we first purchased the house, we bought it with my brother’s partner (now husband). He lived on the first floor and my family occupied the top two floors. After many years in this arrangement, he married my brother, moved out, and then we took over the whole house, renting the first floor to a single woman for almost five years. She was a fantastic tenant, but all good things must come to an end and she decided to leave when she got married. This was right around the time Airbnb was becoming more common around here in Providence and we decided to give it a whirl. The first year was pretty damned good. My wife did most of the work coordinating things and was a quick study with all the scheduling and coordination. We made more money than when we rented, and we kept the unit open for our own use from time to time. The extra space was nice around the holidays or when my teenage daughter just needed some space.

That brings us to our story. Many months ago, a woman from China reserved our Airbnb unit for a two week stay. She explained that her son goes to private school here in Rhode Island and he would be on break at this time. The parents were planning to visit Rhode Island and they would stay together with their son in our home until he went back to school. He also was scheduled to take the SATs during this time, being a junior in high school. As the time for their trip got closer, all hell broke loose in China. Ladies and gentlemen…please put your hands together for…the novel coronavirus!

While the media giants frantically tried to outdo each other with coverage of what was considered an “outbreak,” Cathy was in close contact with our future guests. There was a period of about a week where the mother (Sally) and my wife e-mailed daily, pouring over updates and trying to figure out the best course of action. Finally, it was clear that the parents would never be allowed to leave China during the outbreak, nor was it a good idea. However, their son Patrick was still scheduled to take the SATs and his school was still scheduled to go on break…he’d be practically alone on campus.

Tangent…

The mom calls herself “Sally” and the son calls himself “Patrick.” And, of course, I think to myself, “These cannot be their real names.” I had assumed that Chinese people take on these American/ European names because they are tired of listening to us butcher the pronunciation of their names and, even worse, tired of watching us not even really try to get it right. I also imagined that they are making a concession to get past the implicit bias that comes with a “foreign” name, making it less awkward at job interviews or other situations where it’s not in their best interest to make someone uncomfortable. I researched this and found I was right on both accounts. But what I didn’t know is that Chinese people often have two or three names anyway. This is a tradition that goes way back and can be found with many poets, political leaders, and other historical figures. Back then, the reason for having more than one name was not to deal with some entitled American bias. Sometimes the name said something about your work, your status, or where you came from. In more recent history, the city-state foisted different names on individuals claiming that the use of regional dialects was confusing. But, regardless of the reason, the Chinese have a long history of having more than one name, which just makes it feel more “normal” to choose something like “Sally” or “Patrick” that meets the needs of a particular situation.

Back to the story…

It was decided that Patrick would still come to the apartment and his parents would keep the original rental agreement. Patrick would just stay here by himself and take the SATs at the appointed time. To make this happen, Sally asked if we could pick up Patrick at school the day his break started. It was a 90-minute drive round trip…not too bad. We were happy to help a worried mother and, if I’m honest, we were happy to be getting the money. Patrick seemed a little socially awkward, but he got himself situated just fine. We helped him get his first groceries, got him connected to the Internet, and he took his SATs.

Shortly after the first week, the fun really started. Sally sent an e-mail saying that Patrick had two friends from China, who had been at the same private school, who were now stuck. They couldn’t go home and needed a place to stay. They were two young women who had taken the names Selena and Cassiel, the former only 15 years old (freshman) and the latter 17. We agreed to take them on, as there was enough space for everyone, and they really were in a jam. This, of course, happened in the midst of the U.S. outbreak, which was shortly followed by the declaration of a global pandemic. Now we had three teenagers living downstairs who couldn’t go home and wouldn’t be going back to school. “How the hell did this happen?!”

The days that followed were a comedy of errors, omissions, confusion, and blatant negligence. As my workplace went into lockdown, Cathy’s theater ‘went dark’ with no certainty of when it will open again. Our kids were locked out of school and subjected to the laughable and somewhat pathetic reality of distance learning. My daughter, a senior in high school, watched her senior prom and graduation vanish as if Thanos had collected the Infinity Stones just for her, snapped his fingers, and smiled as the remainder of her senior year turned to dust. In the weeks that followed, her mood vacillated between despair, hysteria, fury, and resignation. Amidst our own personal drama, the parents of our COVID refugees decided that the kids were absolutely not to leave the house under any circumstances. When Cathy told me this, the pieces fell together in my brain like Tetris.

They’re really not going out.

They live here with us.

We’re all they’ve got.

How are they gonna eat?!

In the week that followed, I fumbled through a couple attempts to shop for them, including a trip to an Asian food store, Good Fortune, where few people speak English, and very little is labeled in English. This store had opened about a year ago in my hometown and I was embarrassed I hadn’t shopped there yet. I mean…I’m a food guy, right?! This is my thing! I had fantasies for months before this about strolling up and down the aisles of this store for hours on a Saturday afternoon trying to figure out the different foods and uncovering new treasures. What kinds of meats and fish would I find? What kinds of produce and cooking gadgets? The spices and chili paste! I’d buy bags and cans of stuff that were a complete mystery to me! And I’d set aside half a day just to make sure I had enough time to take it all in, really get to know the place, and unwrap all my presents when I got home!

But this was not my fantasy visit. I had mouths to feed and, in the time of COVID, being a stranger in a strange grocery store just didn’t have the romance. I wasn’t an ex-chef on a voyage of discovery. I was an errand boy with someone else’s shopping list. I wouldn’t have lighthearted exchanges with a helpful attendant about which brand of noodles was her favorite. Everyone would be wearing masks and trying to keep their distance. I would look out of place and confused (not to mention big and scary), and I’d be taking too much time while people waited in line to get in.

The kids downstairs had indeed made me a shopping list. In a painfully polite attempt to make my work easier, they had printed the list in a table format. In the first column was the name of the product in Anglicized form: sour bean cake, charcoal yoghurt drink, chicken and lotus dumpling, and many other collections of individual words I knew, but wasn’t used to seeing together. In the second column were pictures of each product lifted from the Internet, most of which were a little blurry. In the third column was a general description of where the item was supposedly located in the store. As far as I knew, Patrick had been there only once, and the girls had not been there at all. How they were able to identify the location for all these products is still a mystery, but then again, the directions weren’t always spot on.

It took me 90 minutes to find all but one item on their shopping list. It was only about 25 items and I never found the f*#king “canned rice soup.” At one point in my desperation over this final item, I finally engaged an old man who was stocking shelves. He spoke no English and struggled with my shopping list. After a moment studying the picture, he nodded his head and motioned me to follow. He took me to the opposite end of the store from where we first met, looked around for about two minutes and then he too became confused. He called to another staff person who simply ignored us. Perhaps a little embarrassed or frustrated, he handed me a product that looked nothing like what was depicted or described on my list. I thanked him, watched him walk away, and quietly placed it back on the shelf.

I think because my struggle was so pathetic (and my results so mediocre), the kids immediately informed their parents that all food would have to be delivered through online shopping. The next day a massive delivery arrived in a beat up warehouse truck as if we were all standing in the back of a restaurant during the prep shift. A guy who clearly doesn’t usually deliver to a residence hauled four hand trucks worth of bulk goods up into the apartment, took a signature, and hauled off down the road. After that, daily food packages from UPS and Amazon arrived for the next two weeks. I could have served dinner for a week in a 40-seat restaurant with the food that came into that tiny kitchen.

Their cooking was another matter altogether. They made valiant efforts, but I quickly realized, to my sadness, that none of them learned how to cook before they left home. I was hoping that some uniquely Chinese cultural norm would reveal itself as our guests demonstrating a mastery in the kitchen uncommon for their age. Alas, they were just like my own teenagers in the kitchen…surrounded by good food…and basically helpless. Patrick did his best to step into the “chef” role and regularly came knocking on our door to ask for things…a strainer…a better knife…sesame oil…garlic powder…coriander…paprika…a better pan…a better pot…a blender…and on…and on. A significant portion of my kitchen moved downstairs in a matter of days. All the while, the smell of burning oil, burning sugar, and burning vegetables would occasionally rise into our home from the kitchen below.

With all of Patrick’s cooking, and I’m sure there were contributions from the girls, the downstairs had turned into a health hazard. Cathy and I both knew there were going to be issues based on the sheer volume of food alone, and some sour smells started to creep out from underneath the door leading to the kitchen. After almost a week, when an opportunity presented itself, Cathy and I went downstairs to check in with our new teenagers. While we were in the apartment, I looked around the kitchen and tried to keep a straight face, staying focused on a conversation that seemed completely out of place in our setting. It was akin to discussing the pleasantries of visiting a French bakery while standing on a battlefield in the aftermath of a medieval melee.

Once our conversation was through, I politely informed Patrick he needed to get rid of all the trash, wrapping, and boxes that covered the kitchen floor. I would be visiting again the next morning to give the kitchen a deep clean.

As I mentioned, the kitchen is tiny, but it took me every minute of three hours to scrub it clean and organize all the food. Filthy cutting boards, dirty dishes, half eaten food on countertops, a stove top covered in burnt-on grease, expired dairy products, rotten vegetables forgotten under piles of packages, semi-dried unspeakable liquids on the refrigerator shelves, onion and garlic skins scattered on the floor. It was an epic mess. I also discovered Patrick and the girls had arranged the toaster, microwave oven, tea maker, and rice cooker in a fashion that was optimal for electrocution. I found myself terrified by the thought I’d be letting my daughter move out next year into student housing, where she could unleash her own uniquely teenage brand of negligence.

In the weeks that followed, the two girls headed back to China (another chaotic story) and now we have only Patrick. I purchased some new shelving, did some more cleaning, and developed a system for storing the food that will be nearly effortless for him to follow. The threat of electrocution is no more. The teenage circus appears to have left town, and we are back to a more orderly existence. Patrick still does some things that make me shake my head, like cranking the heat when it’s 68 degrees outside. And there’s a tiny leak in the toilet that…well…I’ll get to it at some point. But overall, now that he’s just taking care of himself, Patrick is settling in. Airbnb is back where it should be…off the ever-growing list of emergencies and back in the “somewhat predictable” file.

Meanwhile, outside our doors the world is still trying to get back to its feet, but on very shaky legs. I really do want to get back to Good Fortune, and maybe I can reclaim just a little bit of the magic I had hoped for in my first visit. Until then, I too will try to find my feet on shaky legs and keep playing a game that is not unique to me, but perhaps is uniquely human…pretend everything’s alright until, maybe one day, I’m not pretending anymore.