I love the smell of durian. To be more specific, I love when I can smell its green and brown thorns when I’m perusing the plates and soup spoons. I remember wanting to bring the translucent soup spoon–the one with the little hole at the very tip of the handle–home with me to drink the chicken soup my grandma made.
My grandma would make it in a big white clay cauldron looking pot that had a painting of a stick of grass or a tall flower in the middle. The edges of the pot were tarnished brown by the stove. I never really liked how I could see the little goosebumps on the chicken legs of my ji tang.
My dad went to get one of the spices for the soup. The seasoning looks like a 2D flower made of leftover wood pieces. It’s called wuxiang, five good smells. While he pushed the gray shopping cart around, I was going over my regular excavation: red bean popsicles, the skinny shrimp chips, the flat shrimp chips, and the smudged tubes filled with candies that had a monkey clapping or a pink rock-paper-scissors hand on top as a cap. The first switch was for rock and the second switch was for scissors.
The pink rock-paper-scissors candy tube was what I used to store the dragonflies that we, my sister, neighbor, and grandpa, caught at 5pm in the park. My seven year old self was scared of the dragonflies until my grandpa showed me the trick to grab them by their wings and quickly put them in the tube. With the candy tube holding my treasures, I raced back home on my razor scooters in my pink flip flops that had a flower on it; Grandpa was behind us with his arms behind his back.
On the other side of the snack aisle were jelly sticks and cups that were housed in mini plastic backpacks, plastic bears, and big “cheese ball” containers with the red or purple caps on top. After watching three episodes of Sofia the First, my scissors were sticky and my trash can lined with a Target or a Cub Foods bag was full of the hard to peel plastic. The container was now empty. I would proudly give it to my grandma where she would store spices. Opening the pantry, instead of little jelly straws in the big container I see millet, xiao mi. Later, she would make xiao mi tang.
My dad said we were ready to go and I followed him to the checkout where I saw the lady that constantly tells me she’s jealous of my tall seven year old genes. She asks if we want plastic or a box. There were always plenty of empty boxes. My dad says plastic, suo liao. The “Thank you” yellow smiley face slowly gets stretched to its seams. We walked out of the red lanterns in the entrance and passed the Chinese newspaper stack that had an outdated picture of my friend’s mom in one of the pages.
The plastic bag created sharp creases on my fingers and I could feel the “Have A Nice Day” trying so hard to keep its shape only to slowly expand and stretch from the oyster sauce, jelly containers, scallion pancakes, pickled radish, and shrimp chips. It has the heavy duty of carrying all the pieces of who I am.
