A Plate of Dandelion Omurice

A Plate of Dandelion Omurice - Sophia Mu (Newark Academy, 10th Grade)

Dim light flickers in an attempt to combat the night that has spilled through the white-framed

kitchen window. The entire house is teeming with quiescent silence, save for the sticky shuffling of indoor

shoes against wooden floors, spinning of the spice wheel, clattering of metal measurement spoons, and

barely contained curses of a grumpy younger sibling.

While my older sibling comfortably snores up in a room above, my precious time that could be

spent on school work, assignments, texting my friends, is currently occupied by her request for my

cooking.

I furiously whisk together the demi-glaze’s sauce in a shallow pan, hurrying to procure four eggs,

a splash of milk, and a lump of rice.

I mix together random spices from the cavern of seasonings, splashing soy sauce on the pan’s

edge and watching it bubble and smoke, eventually combining with some sizzling rice.

Cooking has never been this burdensome.

That’s not true.

This lazy ass is seriously making me make her something in the dead of night?

You still made it.

I position the golden fried rice onto a curved bowl, shoving the rice together into a charming

boat-shaped droplet using a bamboo spatula.

Scalding oil swirls around the iron skillet, and finally the whisked eggs are dropped in.

Aggressive and constant stirring of chopsticks and maneuvering of the pan emits a grating noise to the

ears, but most likely will not wake the interminably sleeping college student.

A canoe-shaped omelette makes its way onto the bed of rice, and is sliced open to flow down in

all its eggy lava glory. For a final touch, my demi-glaze sauce thinly cloaks around the dish, completing

the meal.

As I set the food on the table, I am keenly aware of the distance between us. It is silent, and it

never shows in our interactions, but is completely palpable.

At one point, we were only four years, seven months, and nine days apart.

When we still lived in the same house, I was in elementary school while she was in middle

school. Because she was always a bar higher on the academic ladder, I always admired the view of her

accomplishments and abilities from below. She would often try to shake me off when her friends would

arrive (though they definitely enjoyed my company more), to no avail. Her presence was a constant,

something I could always rely on being there. In the moments where we were pushed to the precipice of

not being able to confide in others, we turned to each other, our closest confidants.

In fourth grade, my sister disappeared to boarding school. While she took an excited wave and

bounded off towards independence, I surreptitiously grieved my loss while enduring the constant flow of

roadblocks hunting me down on my path of growing. The house was devoid of her loud stomping, her

whimsical giggles, her comforting presence that wrapped me and kept me safe from the endlessly

exhausting standards that consumed me each day. Every time she came home, she would be absolutely

buried in work, sleep in until dinnertime the next day, and leave after sharing a single meal with us. Our

evanescent exchanges meant to unite us only left me feeling as if something was missing.

Even in the pandemic, when she was only a few meters away, it felt as if a gaping chasm stood in

between us. It was never a harmful ideation that brought this about, but a slow process of erosion splitting

through the once rock-solid base.

Now I am in high school, and she is approaching her final year in college. The period abundant

with time together as sisters is past its prime. Soon I will be off to college, and she will be in medical

school, and we may not even live on the same side of the country.

While she sleeps only twenty feet above me, it feels no different than the hundreds of miles

between us at any other time. We are completely different people to what we remembered and have no

idea how that has come about.

But when her eyes light up after sniffing the aroma of this freshly made meal, and I am consumed

by her bone-crushing, affectionate embrace, I hope that with every cheerful bite, I can push past the piles

of loose-leaf, hours of tedious work, memories we never made, and close the distance. Until miles

become meters, meters become feet, and we are just two sisters enjoying each other’s company in the

same home, at the same dinner table.

And through all our poking insults, all the arguments, all the frustration,

I would die for her.

And I would cook for her.