I left work early yesterday due to unbearable pain in my lower back.

I imagine it may be from a combination of heavy lifting and moving this past weekend with little rest and general lower back issues.

On the train ride home I thought about dinner and my mother.

The two cannot help but be forever linked in my brain.

There’s no one who cooks like my mother.

Isn’t it like that for everyone?

Don’t we all rave about our mothers’ cooking?

She’s the one who taught you how to make the very basic things you do know how to make and she’s the one whose nightly dinners you aspire to be able to one day whip up in your own kitchen with the same ease.

At present my mother is in the hospital. Her health has not been the greatest for a while but this past weekend, as I was moving, an infection my mom dealt with last October flared up again in the same leg and she was taken to the emergency room.

I asked my sister about her before I left work and she told me that Wednesday night, she was taken to the ICU because of a severe drop in her blood pressure.

But that she was doing better now, however the doctors were keeping her under observation for a couple more days.

Now, Carmen Kastle is a fighter. She’s had to be. Someone who moves to a different country without any knowledge of the language or the people, works hard, back-breaking jobs to support her family back home and the family she started, and raised three strong daughters, has to be.

So I have no doubt that this infection is getting it’s butt kicked just by my mother’s sheer stubbornness. But there’s optimism, then there’s faith and then there’s what the doctors can do. And I’m praying that they can get the infection under control and get her back home.

So last night I thought of the contents of my kitchen and wondered what my mother would be able to create with it and the answer was nothing.

There was nothing in there that she would be able to create a meal out of. If she was there she’d send me to the nearest Mexican grocery store and tell me to pick up, well, just about everything.

So that’s what I did. I got off the bus and bought rice, salt (“Who doesn’t have salt?” My sister later yelled on the phone when I was asking for cooking directions) a can of tomato sauce, an onion, sazon, adobo and I was ready to throw down some Mexican rice with the chicken breast I’d left defrosting.

I got home and Mel was already there. “I’m cooking tonight, ” I tell her as I unload the groceries on the counter.

“Ooh!” she replies.

I put the chicken to boil so I could use the broth to cook the rice.

It cooks for an hour while we lay in the living room on the floor watching TV shows on Netflix. It was good for my back, the hardwood floor,  which was convenient since we don’t have couches and we have to watch on a laptop.

Finally after one episode I go back to the kitchen, drain the chicken and get to work frying the rice with the onion.

“I’m supposed to fry till the rice is golden, does that look golden to you?” I ask Melissa as I’m stirring the rice. “What should I do with the chicken?” I ask my sister who’s on the phone with me.

“I don’t know, sauté it with, well what do you have?” Nothing. The answer was I had nothing in the fridge to sauté the stupid chicken with.

“I don’t have any vegetables, all I bought were fruits.” I look at my rice and it seems golden enough to me. “Mel, open the can of tomato sauce and bring it to me, yeah?”

“With what?” She asks.

“There’s a can opener in the drawer what do you mean with what?”

“dude I don’t know how to use that we have an electric one at my mom’s.”

I just look at her and keep frying the rice.

“Well maybe you can make some taquitos. Do you have tortillas?” My sister asked me.

“Uh…I have sandwich bread.” I looked at my fridge.

She started to cackle.  “She says she has sandwich bread.” I hear her tell my other sister who also starts laughing.

“Shut up! You’re not helping!” I yell as I pour in the tomato sauce. I start to fry it with the sauce now.

“What kind of Mexican doesn’t have tortillas in their house?”

“What do I do with the chicken?!”

“I don’t know, season it with adobo and fry it I guess.”

“Make a sandwich.” I hear my other sister say as they burst into giggles.

“Bye!” I hang up the phone and add the cups of chicken broth. Two cups for every one of rice.

I stir that, lower the heat and cover it.

“Wanna watch another episode?” I ask Melissa.

“Sure.”

We lay down on the kitchen floor because there’s no furniture there either and every few minutes I’m get up to stir.
The rice starts to stick and it’s then that I realize I hadn’t salted it at all.

“shit,  well just add some water and then add the salt.” Mel tells me as she hovers.

I do as I’m told and let it sit some more.

“It’s supposed to fluff…” it doesn’t look particularly fluffy. I remember the plate of chicken in the counter. “I think I’m just going to break up the chicken and add it like that.”

“Sounds good to me.”

I mix in the chicken and cover it again.

“I think it’s going to be ready soon.”

“I got you, I’ve already set the table.” I look and see napkins on the floor by where we were sitting with forks and our drinks.

I start laughing and can’t help but smile at my best friend. “Give me a bowl and I’ll serve you.”

I serve us and we sit down in front of the computer. “I hope you like it. I know it’s not perfect, but I think it tastes good.”

“Dude it’s delicious. I even like the burnt bits.”

My face burns. “It’s not a lot of them is it?”

“Dude it’s good. I’m not being nice.

“Ok. It’s like a bootleg arroz con pollo. It’s Kastle arroz con pollo.”

“I like it. Can I have seconds?”

“You want seconds??? Of course!”

She serves us both some more and we sit there eating happily until we hear our other roommate get home.

“Did you guys eat dinner on the floor?”

“Yep.”

“Okay. ” She laughs.

This is life.

No furniture, eating wherever we can sit and working on cooking like our moms.
I wonder if that’s how my mom was when she got here with her sister. If she cooked things that would make her mother cringe, if she ate on the floor because she barely had furniture.

It feels like a cycle. Each of usmaking our own way, daughter,  mother grandmother, learning how to cook like the women before us learning how to cook in our own way.

Tonight as I sit in the ICU with my mom watching the Mexico vs Panama game I look forward to the day when I can cook something for my mom in my own kitchen.