Sean Dietrich
My wife and I are eating at a Chinese restaurant.
We’ve been driving for hours through South Carolina. We pulled over to refuel and address pressing bladder issues.
And we found this place.
The waitress asked what we wanted. We ordered a seaweed salad. This particular salad was colored Disney-World green and tasted like eating bait.
My wife took a bite and said, “Remember when we first got married?”
“I do,” I said.
“Remember when we used to get takeout from that Chinese place over by the Kmart?”
“Yes.”
“Remember how we’d always get the seaweed salad?”
“I do.”
She took a bite. Green earthworms hung from the corners of her mouth. And I couldn’t help but remember those younger kids who used to eat Chinese food a lot.
Me with my long hair. Her with her bangs. We were poor. We had one window unit A/C in our apartment, which only worked on days of the week beginning with L. The world still had Kmarts back then.
The Chinese restaurant in our hometown was cheap. Duct tape on the cushions. There weren’t many places to go for dates. So that’s where we went.
The food at the old Chinese restaurant was stellar. And food has always been so important to the woman I married. Some people eat to live. Jamie lives to eat.
I met Jamie after she graduated culinary school. She wore chef’s whites for a living. She bossed people around in a kitchen while stirring steel pots, angrily shouting French words, using strange phrases like, “This béarnaise has broken, dangit!”
To call her job a high-stress job would be like calling a Carnival cruise ship a “dinghy.”
Food service is one of the hardest jobs known to man. Being a female chef is even harder. You constantly have male staffers with “tiny spoon syndrome,” trying to prove how macho they are. Some guys don’t like having a female boss.
Food service also features a high burnout rate. And drug usage within the food service industry is off the charts. It’s a difficult job. And it’s unforgiving.
So Jamie finally got out of the food service game and, just to show you how insane she truly is, she became a math teacher.
But she never quit adoring food, or using French words during pivotal culinary moments. Food is her life. Every vacation we take is based on food. Every day centers around meals.
Every morning, when she first wakes up she asks, “What do you want for supper?” And even though we travel for a living, she still manages to find time to make food from scratch. She still finds time to try and teach me French words.
Sitting here in this Chinese restaurant, I realize how much this lovely woman has changed me. Inside and out.
When I first met her, my idea of good food was Vienna sausage and a loaf of Wonderbread. Today, just look at me, I’m eating bright, green worm-like oceanic foliage.
That’s not to mention all the other ways she’s changed my life. She has changed me spiritually. Emotionally. Deeply.
She leans over and pecks me on the cheek. “Do you still love me?” she says.
“With all my heart,” says I.
She smiles. “Say that in French.”
I take her hand and gaze deepward into her eyes. “That in French,” I say.