My neighbors are cooking. Something fishy and sour, with contrarian undertones. Singing in spices or dashes of this or that with complicated names. It's different yet familiar: the aroma of immigrant cooking, or so it seems to this daughter of immigrants. I imagine the steaming big pot, a mortar and pestle, some chopping boards glistening with the juices or oils of hard-to-find items. What we do for a taste of home. A child cries out. A word for mother, I think. So many variants of the word, but the intonation (plaintive need) remains the same.




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