By December. I took Miya to Sacramento for Christmas — our first Christmas with Ken since the Parkinson's diagnosis, the first time Miya has seen her grandfather since the tremor became visible. I prepared her on the drive down: "Jii-chan's hand shakes sometimes. It's a thing called Parkinson's. It doesn't hurt. He's still the same Jii-chan." She said, "Like a shaky hand?" I said yes. She said, "Can I hold it?" and the question undid me, the simplicity of it, the child's instinct that the response to a trembling hand is to hold it steady.
Ken's condo was decorated for Christmas in the most minimal way possible — a small wreath Barbara had sent, a red candle on the table. Ken does not decorate. Ken endures holidays the way he endures everything: quietly, without ceremony, with the underlying understanding that holidays are temporary weather and the garden will need tending when they pass. But he had bought Miya a present — a book about Japanese vegetables, a children's book with illustrations of daikon and kabocha and shiso, and the book was so perfectly Ken, so exactly the intersection of his two passions (gardening and not talking), that I had to leave the room to compose myself.
I cooked all weekend — Fumiko's dishes, one after another, the kitchen producing food the way a factory produces widgets, except the widgets are love and the factory is grief and the production line is a woman standing at her dead grandmother's son's stove making her dead grandmother's food for her dead grandmother's grandson who has Parkinson's and who eats every bite with an expression that, if you know Ken, is the expression of a man who is being held steady by the only hand that reaches — not a human hand, not a doctor's hand, but the hand of a meal, prepared by a daughter, from a mother's recipe, in a kitchen that remembers.
Miya held Ken's trembling hand at the dinner table. She held it while she ate onigiri with the other hand. She held it without comment, without drama, with the natural, devastating kindness of a child who was told the hand shakes and decided the response was to hold it. Ken looked at Miya's hand on his and said nothing. The nothing was everything. The nothing was the loudest thing Ken Nakamura has ever not said.
By Sunday morning I had cooked myself hollow — nimono, onigiri, soup, rice, all of it — and what was left in me was something simpler. Miya was awake before Ken, sitting at his kitchen table with the Japanese vegetable book open to the kabocha page, and I thought: pumpkin. Something warm and easy and orange that she could help me stir, something that didn’t ask anything of anyone. This is that recipe. It’s the one I made when the weekend had already said everything that needed saying, and all that was left was to feed the morning.
Pumpkin Oatmeal
Prep Time: 5 minutes | Cook Time: 10 minutes | Total Time: 15 minutes | Servings: 2
Ingredients
- 1 cup old-fashioned rolled oats
- 2 cups water (or milk of your choice, for creamier oatmeal)
- 1/2 cup pumpkin puree (canned or fresh)
- 1 tablespoon maple syrup or honey, plus more to taste
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
- 1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- Pinch of fine salt
- Optional toppings: pepitas (roasted pumpkin seeds), a drizzle of maple syrup, a pat of butter, a sprinkle of brown sugar
Instructions
- Heat the liquid. In a small saucepan over medium heat, bring the water or milk just to a simmer.
- Add the oats. Stir in the rolled oats and reduce heat to medium-low. Cook, stirring occasionally, for about 5 minutes until the oats begin to absorb the liquid and thicken.
- Stir in the pumpkin. Add the pumpkin puree and stir well to combine. Continue cooking for 3 to 4 minutes, stirring frequently, until the oatmeal reaches your desired consistency.
- Season. Remove from heat and stir in the maple syrup, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and salt. Taste and adjust sweetness or spice as needed.
- Serve warm. Divide between two bowls and add toppings of your choice. Pepitas add a gentle crunch; a thin drizzle of maple syrup adds warmth.
Nutrition (per serving)
Calories: 210 | Protein: 6g | Fat: 3g | Carbs: 40g | Fiber: 6g | Sodium: 115mg