My Magnum Opus

     The gigantic knife flashed dangerously close to my fingertips as I minced a clove of pungent garlic. When I’d asked Grandmother for a knife, I had not expected being given a weapon capable of beheading Anne Boleyn. The golden peanut oil in the bottom of the heavy, cast-iron wok began to sputter – ready for stir-frying and I hastened to finish the garlic.

     The spaghetti idea was something I had been concocting for a long time. It actually began sometime in early July; months before I’d even met my Chinese host family, on one of my early morning runs. The long, straight, pine-lined road that stretches by my house for miles in both directions doesn’t much lend itself to thought- provoking scenery, so my early morning runs were occupied with daydreams about China. I imagined my Chinese host family, the long intellectual conversations we’d have, and the way they’d patiently define the few characters I did not recognize in the Beijing Daily. Perhaps it is because of my lifelong love affair with both spaghetti and cooking that somewhere on my runs (usually during the endless slog up Tarbox Hill), I also imagined myself wowing my new family with a traditional spaghetti supper.

     My dreams of "long, intellectual" discussions shattered almost immediately after meeting my family. Two years of studying Chinese was rendered utterly useless in understanding my host parents and brother as they jabbered away at the dinner table. Reading the newspaper was almost as successful, forcing me to proclaim myself illiterate in my new surroundings. "No big deal," I assured my bruised ego, "intellectual conversation can wait. I’ve still got spaghetti in the bank."

     And thus I found myself one Sunday evening in Grandmother’s kitchen, chopping garlic. The kitchen, a closet sized hallway barely wide enough for one person, consists of a gas stovetop, no oven, a sink, and one ancient countertop which stands on creaking legs. The counter, when pushed all the way against the wall, leaves just enough space for one person to squeeze between it and the stove. A motley assortment of unlabeled jars containing white, green, brown, and black powders as well as spices crowd its knife-gauged surface leaving just enough space for a heavy wooden cutting board.

     That afternoon, I’d made the exciting trek to the nearest international food store, a startlingly expensive establishment in the basement of a ritzy western shopping mall. After perusing just one aisle, my salivary glands were working double-time – and I realized for the first time how much I missed American food. Now, the outcome of my trip sat, for lack of counter space, in the sink: a package of Italian pasta, hamburger meat, and a jar of Classico^® Spaghetti Sauce. I smiled - close to giddy with anticipation for the dinner to come. Knowing, all to well, that my American mom would be horrified if she knew I was using sauce from a jar.

     An hour later, exchanging dubious glances over the thick slices of crunchy French bread and plate of pre-shredded mozzarella (also mouthwatering finds at the WaiGuo market) I’d laid on the table, Ba, Ma, and Didi arrived. The noodles "al dente," the sauce (doctored up with garlic, onions, and hamburger) "excellente," I could feel every muscle in my stomach quivering with excitement. My cheeks glowed as I served up bowls of pasta, ladled generous amounts of sauce on each, and distributed pairs of chopsticks to my family.

     It wasn’t until I placed a heaping, chopstick-full of mozzarella onto my pasta that I detected slight hesitation from my little brother. He looked from his steaming bowl of "’scetti" to the pyramid of French bread, to the plate of cheese, and finally to me. A bedraggled mane of curly hair, noodles dangling from my mouth, flecks of red tomato sauce splattering my chin, a string of melted mozzarella running taunt from my chopsticks to my bowl, I doubtless appeared a "Yanguizi" (foreign devil) come to invade his home.

     Mopping clean the bottom of my bowl with a crust of bread, I raised my head for the first time since the initial mouthful. Though not the stuff of my mother’s kitchen, my dinner was, to my spaghetti-starved lips, positively magnifique. My family picked timidly at the still brimming bowls in front of them, unaware of the masterpiece that lay within. My host brother snatched up a chopstick-full and slowly, deliberately, forced it closer and closer towards his mouth. Ma smiled encouragingly at her son, and Ba cast him a look of utter admiration. The poor boy, the sacrificial lamb nominated by his parents to eat the spaghetti, helplessly and painstakingly chewed and swallowed my opus.

     Ma rose quietly and opened a cupboard in the kitchen. "Bo-shee," she began in crawling Chinese, "since you like your spaghetti so much, and miss American food, why don’t you finish ours?" She pulled several dishes from the cupboard and set them on the table. A plate of congealed baicai, another of still more coagulated stir-fried cauliflower, and a third cold sautéed pork, pepper, and egg dish pushed my cheese and bread towards the back of the table.

     In spite of myself, I had to grin – so that’s what Ma had been doing in the kitchen all morning!

     It is very good though, she assured me pushing her spaghetti towards me, "Didi likes it very much!" From the other side of the table my brother gave me a weak smile.

     I looked from Ba to Didi to Ma, the realization that another summertime daydream was, alas, nothing more than that. The look of relief that flashed across my brother’s face as he pushed his spaghetti bowl away and helped himself to coagulated cauliflower stirred something deep in my throat. It bubbled out of me uncontrollably. My host parents smiled cautiously, Didi grinned shyly between mouthfuls. Next thing I knew, the tiny kitchen was ringing with the sound of our laughter.