Being away from home, longing for family is a normalcy for most international students. Chinese students, who have had fed their stomach with pluralistic and delicious food, miss their food a lot. However, the one dish that always makes me to feel satisfied is simple, extremely simple: a normal egg fried rice.
Every time I go back home, the first thing my grandma cooks for me would always be the fried rice. Every time I ate the rice, I could feel my blood vibrating in my veins. Every time I finished the rice, grandma was always staring at me with a smile, an everlasting smile throughout my life.
My home was two blocks away from my grandma’s house; therefore, I have spent nearly half of my childhood in my grandma’s house. After school, my grandma would always appear at my school to pick me up and walk home with me. Every day, regardless of how bad the weather was, she would always stand there, right at the school’s gate, smiling at me. My grandma must have a magic bag, just like Doraemon’s pocket. Food, fruit or even toys, everything I wanted would hide in that small bag, but my grandma just smiled at me while I was enjoying them.
Saturday was always the day that grandma cooked the egg fried rice. The ingredients were simple: green onion, rice, egg, and sausage. The cooking process was simple, but what is in the rice is not simple. There is a magical flavor, the flavor that brought me back to the days in my grandma’s house. Before I study abroad, it tastes like homemade fried rice. However, last time I went back to her house, she cooked the rice for me. This time, I can tell she has put another sauce into the rice: it contains slight bitterness and sourness, but it has more of her flavor, the flavor that played the melody in my heart. I raised my head, she was looking at me with the everlasting smile. All of a sudden, I understood the ingredient of the sauce.
The old chairs, old bowls, old houses, old pots and my grandma, who was cooking in the kitchen. She has tiny eyes just like me, although everyone says I inherit that feature from my grandma. Actually, it is not only the eyes, my parents say that I am made out of the mold from my grandma. She is short, but sometimes she is gigantic. She only graduates elementary school, but she is the most knowledgeable person I’ve ever seen. she seems free but she is always busy. Most importantly, she loves me and I love her.
Don’t judge me on my love for my grandma, every grain of the fried rice reminds me of her. I know she will always be the harbor for me to rest, she will always be the kindest giant to hold my back, and she will never stop missing me, just like I never stop longing for her. She is maybe just a normal old lady in other’s opinion, but to me, she is my home. She will always cook the egg fried rice for me at home, she is my home. She is always the first one who open the door for me when I came back home, she is my home.
“ My Grandma, you are my home.”