My mother lives 6,000 miles away from her parents, and I live 3,000 miles away from mine. Before our trip to China, it had been four years since my mother had last seen her family and I had seen my grandparents. It had also been thirteen years since either of us had left the United States and made the sixteen-and-a-half-hour pilgrimage to Chongqing, my mother’s hometown. Among the shock of tasting foods I had never tried, discovering family I had never met, and visiting places I had never seen, I was most surprised to notice that my grandfather’s age had begun to catch up with him. He walked slowly, made frequent trips to the restroom, and often lost his train of thought in the middle of his sentence. He also firmly believed that I loved to eat bananas.
“See?” He’d said, triumphantly holding a bundle of bananas that he bought from the market.
“Grandpa remember.”
In Chinese, there exists a phrase that translates as “banana person”. Crudely explained, it is used to describe someone yellow on the outside, and white on the inside. My brother and I were often called this by our relatives, thinly veiled insults at our American conventions. In their minds, there were considerable ways in which we had turned our backs on our culture. And in my family, a picky eater was the worst thing someone could be. My parents and their parents had never had the privilege of saying they wanted something else to eat, simply grateful to have anything to eat at all. So I refused to admit that I did not like bananas–that I had never liked them at all. Instead, I smiled, insisting that I would save them for later.
As later came and days passed, the bunch matured from pale green to yellow. Then deep dark spots began to appear, dotting every surface of the quickly ripening fruit. Their saccharine scent seemed to follow me each time I passed the kitchen.
I stared guiltily at the bananas, now almost completely browned. My mother sat next to me, watching my plight.
“Aren’t you going to eat them?” she asked.
I reminded her that I hated bananas and their mushy texture, and begged her to have some. Instead, she confessed sheepishly that she didn’t like them either. Ever the problem-solver, my mother began to think aloud.
“There must be something we could do with them…”
And suddenly I had an idea. I was going to make banana bread.
My grandparents’ apartment did not have an oven, although my grandmother had recently purchased a fashionable new air fryer. Without proper bakeware or measuring cups, I was left to fret over the batter, adjusting the recipe I knew by heart to my grandparents' tastes. I added less sugar, calculated that one bowl of milk meant three bowls of flour, and whisked in all of the bananas that I could save. There are people who will tell you that baking is a science, a temperamental thing with an exact formula never to be changed. But truthfully, baking is an art—all you really need to know is your audience.
Thirty minutes later, a warm, sugary scent filled the air. My grandparents, now an hour past their usual bedtime, clamored at the kitchen table, excited for a taste of this foreign dessert. I met my grandfather’s gaze as he ate, nodding his head in approval.
Like baking, I learned that living is all about balance. The right ratio of sugar to butter, the right amount of respect for my family, balanced out with respect for myself. And most importantly, I learned that when life gives you bananas, you can always make banana bread.
Elle Liu is a senior Illustration student at the School of Visual Arts. Elle likes sad stories and knitting tiny objects. Her illustration work can be found at elle-liu.com