excerpt:
Months later, he was dead. Again my mother made us soups for us for the holidays: the annual turkey soup; split-pea in December, following our Christmas ham. Numb with grief, I remember I was determined to feel what my father had felt near the end, to eat the spicy foods he had craved—to push myself to try first Tabasco sauce, and later the jangs and pastes and powders and sauces to which I still turn today. I look to such foods when I desperately want to feel something while eating. When I want to remember my dad.
Noah Cho teaches middle-school English in the San Francisco Bay Area. His writing has appeared on NPR’s CodeSwitch, Shondaland, The Atlantic, and The Toast. He spends most of his free time going on hikes with and taking photos of his doggo, Porkchop.
hat tip to Luke Tsai for the link
