My mom is always touched when I make her food even though she tends to complain about it. She tells me that she didn’t raise me to cook food and “do manual labor.” To her, it’s like a low class job or activity even though she grew up extremely poor in a rural part of central Vietnam. She says cooking is hard work and that I should just “lie down and relax” when I’m not at work. This is slightly comical to me, though. If I work a 40-hour work week, she’s essentially telling me that she wants me to “lie down” 128 hours. That would get really boring, wouldn’t it?

Before I left home, I humored her and made her beloved and requested boxed brownie mixes. She doesn’t like baking since she really hates measuring anything when making food, so when it comes to even boxed mixes, she’d prefer someone else do it despite how simple it is. She knows how much I can’t stand mixes (I prefer to bake from scratch, which to this day, still befuddles her to no end), so she’s fully aware that I do this only because I love her and nothing else.

I talked to her on the phone today, and she thanks me profusely for making “such delicious brownies – so chewy!” Mom, I said, it was from a box! “I don’t care — it still tastes good, and you know I love it!” She exclaims in response. That’s what moms do. They complain about the things you do even though they absolutely love it at the same time and then go and tell all their friends about it.