Photo by Steven Tan via Flickr
My mom taught me how to cook a few things growing up, some of the basics. It's the one thing I'll trust my mother's wisdom on. When we see each other, the conversation topic eventually always ends up on food; which recipes we have tried, the flavors, the spices, the texture.
My dad has a similar love for food. He still brings up the steak he made when I flew out to visit him in 2013. He tells me in his Persian accent,
"Shereanie, do you remember dat steak I made ven you came to visit? Oh my god."
I laugh and roll my eyes, but I actually do remember that it was an amazing New York steak.
My mom and dad are night and day. They have been divorced longer than either one's longest marriages have lasted, and I wonder now if they even knew they ever had the love for food in common. My mom is Caucasian and my dad is Persian (Iranian). My mom grew up in a small Caucasian town in Connecticut. She has ghostly fair skin, blond hair and green eyes. My dad grew up in Tehran, Iran, and has olive skin, brown eyes, and black hair.
I grew up in a small, primarily Caucasian town with my mother. It's an odd feeling sometimes to be half one thing and half another. When I visit them now, I attempt to blend in. I'll play the Iranian girl when I visit my father and sister and uncles, but I never truly fit the part. I only know how to speak English, so when they speak in Farsi I stupidly smile and nod. I'll play the Caucasian when I visit my mother and the town I grew up in, but I don't look quite right for the part. My mom has often been offended by strangers asking if I am her adopted daughter.
An Iranian colleague approached me recently and said that he heard I was Persian. I said yes, but that I was half. The same questions always seem to follow in these situations.
"Who is Persian? Your father or mother?"
"My father."
"Do you speak Farsi?"
"No"
"Have you been to Iran?"
"No"
"You are not Persian, you are American. Half Persian? What is that? Do you even know the dishes?"
"What?"
"The food. Do you know how to cook the food?"
"Yes."
"Ah, very good." He said nodding in approval. Suddenly our walls dissolved a little, and we spoke of the Persian food we loved the most. The kabob, the crispy rice, the spice saffron and the smell that lingers sweetly in our homes.
Sherean Bledsoe's poetry has appeared in 'Writing Sound: An Anthology of Poems from the Southern San Joaquin Valley' and 'Writing Flora, Writing Fauna: A Collection of Poems from the Southern San Joaquin Valley'. She works as an administrative coordinator for California State University, Bakersfield.