Issue #24 - Paying Homage Through Food

Connecting memories, loss, and the food that tie us together

Note From Editor

Hello everyone!! I hope you’re doing well. Today, we have a beautiful, heartwrenching essay from Faithna that captures memories that stay alive through culinary creations, even when a loved one has passed. Food is so evocative—dishes and ingredients have the power to bring us back viscerally to sharing a meal with someone or watching a dear one cook. There’s humor in the piece too, as Faithna tries to recreate her mother’s dish. In a short piece, she takes us through several emotions. I hope you enjoy, and that you’re staying warm. If you traveled for American Thanksgiving, I hope you had safe travels!

Padya

Faithna Geffrard

Faithna Geffrard is a Haitian American writer interested in food, words, and the world.

Eating Memories of My Mother

For some autumn is the season of apple picking and pumpkin spice. As the weather dips we wrap ourselves in cozy sweaters and reach for drinks that warm the body. As the daughter of Haitian immigrants, cool weather makes me recall my mother’s chokolat. 

Whenever family members would travel to Haiti my mother would ask them to bring back goods from our homeland. As a child food goods were of utmost importance. I once snuck strong peppermint candies that my mother buried in her dresser drawers. The shocking sharp and sticky sweet mint beckoned me piece after piece until there were none left.

Oftentimes family would return with fragrant, round compressed balls of cacao in clear plastic bags. They’d sit in the pantry until the Florida fall hit a frigid 65 degrees and my mother would transform them into magic.

Rising before the sun, she would set a pot on the stove with water, cinnamon sticks, and star anise. She would grate the cacao to a tune that accompanied the fragrant rolling boil of the water then sprinkle it into the pot. As the cacao married into the mix, she grabbed the essence of vanilla and opened cans of evaporated milk. After adding those two things, she added an unmeasured amount of sugar and a pinch of salt. By this time my siblings and I would wake to a house that was aromatic, our bodies experiencing Pavlovian responses to the grainy mixture. My mother strained the mixture and returned it to the stove as she warmed thick loaves of Haitian bread in the oven.

Some of my most significant food memories are of my mother cooking and filling every corner of the kitchen with songs; Haitian-Creole church hymns memorized over a lifetime. Eating and drinking her creations seemed like divinity. The marriage of sweet and bitter chokolat are imprinted in my body, on my soul. Drinking the hot chocolate tied me to the Haitian women who once harvested cacao on plantations as enslaved people who fought for their freedom and made what was once forbidden theirs, mine.

As the fourth anniversary of my mother’s death approaches my heart is heavy. What is there to say about losing a mother when you are a mother? How do you quantify or make sense of all the things she cannot physically experience with you? 

In some ways all I have of my mother is her food. The two of us spent hours cooking together. We cleaned greens, peeled garlic, separated beans from stones, and steamed pot after pot of rice together. I value how she taught me to utilize my body as a means to measure; a hand, curved like a cup or the different knuckles of a finger. The first time I learned to separate chicken at the joint, I almost threw up. But it is a necessary skill when a whole chicken is cheaper than a package of drumsticks. 

The year following her death I attempted her plantain porridge. It was disastrous. My husband found me crying into a lumpy bowl and cursing in every language I knew. The taste was off, probably because I used almond milk and powdered cinnamon. I thought back to a time my mother witnessed me dash powdered cinnamon into a dish she was making and the way her face contorted in horror. My husband watched in confusion as I laughed with tears of mirth and sadness running down my face. 

“Do I help… or?” He asked.

“This tastes like ass.” I cried.

He wrapped me in an embrace as I explained what brought me to that state.

I have not tried to make any of her sweet dishes since that day. But I often make her sos pwa, bean sauce. Sos pwa is how many Haitians dress up white rice, beans stewed for hours with spices that include clove, garlic, and peppers. My children may not have memories of their grandmother, but this is something that I can give them that she gave me. Together we eat spoonful after spoonful of beans and rice to consume memories of my mother so that she is never forgotten.