Content revision 4e771eaf0390cc87b6c7c6fd8469f3508f6ceeec7119472e6c1ccf17e2e1e5d2

## My Mother’s Cooking Across Places

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Source ID fragments:mothers-cooking-across-places
Original https://www.henryw.me/#/fragments#mothers-cooking-across-places

My mother has always been good at making food that is both healthy and genuinely good. When we were still living together in Shanghai, this felt completely normal. She cooked at home and I ate what she made, and at the time I did not think of it as anything worth remembering. It was just part of home.

Later, after life became more scattered and she spent more time in New Zealand, her cooking started to feel different. Visiting her there, a meal she had made was no longer just a normal meal; it became a small return to something familiar. The food itself matters, of course, usually clean, warm, and carefully made, but what I remember more is the continuity. The same person who cooked for us in Shanghai was now cooking in another country, at another stage of life, and the taste still carried something from before.

That is what makes it feel like home. Home is not fixed in one city or one apartment or one period of life; sometimes it shows up through a repeated act, someone still cooking for you and still caring whether you have eaten well. I do not get to eat my mother's cooking often now, and maybe that is why I notice it more when I do.