When my best friend told me she was pregnant earlier this year, I told her that after she gave birth, I would come over to cook for her. She expressed interest in all the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) foods, the Chinese postpartum confinement meals, and I immediately got excited, thinking that I could come cook these things for her. When I gave birth and was recovering, I didn’t have anyone come cook for me. At that time, there was another COVID outbreak. My mom didn’t want to travel, and my aunt apologized to me multiple times for not being there to take care of me and cook for me, even though she’s not even my mother and not even my blood-related aunt. What my aunt did do, which I am still grateful for to this day, is she went out and bought and labeled all the ingredients for the Chinese chicken wine soup (ji jiu tang) she would have made for me. She bought the ingredients in quantities so large that I’d just run out of most of them just recently. She sent me instructions for how to make the soup. And since then I’ve made it a number of times and love it; it doesn’t even matter if you’re recovering from childbirth or not, but the soup itself is so soothing and comforting. It’s like a Chinese hug in a bowl. As I made this soup numerous times, I thought to myself — I’d love to make these types of dishes for a postpartum friend so that they can also have a hug in multiple bowls.

So, after taking a regular subway train, an express bus (for the first time ever — and I also just learned it’s not covered by my OMNY card; I had to pay $7 extra just to board this damn bus!), and then a quick $15 Uber ride, I was at my friend’s house in Staten Island. I had prepped a number of things leading up to this day to streamline cooking at her place. In her kitchen, I quickly made myself at home and made these dishes: multigrain congee (purple long grain rice, brown long grain jasmine, white short grain, and yellow mung beans, sweetened with a hint of rock sugar and flavored with a touch of ginger), pork rib and fig soup, braised “eggs hugging tofu” (jidan bao doufu), dang shen herbal tea, and hawthorn berry, longan, and cinnamon herbal tea. Yesterday night, I made stir-fried water spinach/morning glory/ong choy/kong xin cai with shrimp paste and packed it in a glassware. I also made a batch of lactation cookies with galactagogues; after my own breastfeeding journey, I honestly don’t believe in “galactagogues,” but who is going to say no to cookies?! I used the same recipe I used for myself that has oats, flaxseed, butter, coconut oil, and 70 percent Valrhona chocolate feves; this time I didn’t have brewer’s yeast, but I did throw in a handful of sliced almonds for extra protein. In Chinatown, I also picked up some “spongies,” or “paper wrapped sponge cakes” for her since I know she likes them.

It was a pain in the ass to get to her house in Staten Island to say the least. Her fiance had the stomach flu, so he wasn’t able to pick me up or drop me off at the ferry. I ended up having to take the express bus (on a tight schedule) and two Ubers (more money than I would have liked) to get there. I was also carrying quite a load of things on my back. So by the end of the day, I was pretty tired, and my shoulders were sore and tight from the weight I carried. All of that was annoying, but in the end, I didn’t mind it because it meant I got to cook for my friend. And I find meaning in helping her, in cooking for her, in nourishing her, and in making sure she feels loved and supported. There is meaning and purpose in doing all that to me. And while most people would never do something like this for a friend, even a close one, or someone who was not blood related, I think that most people in general want to do the easiest, laziest thing just to have more time for themselves to do things that are completely and utterly meaningless. It is so easy to send a baby gift, to attend a baby shower (it’s a party where you get free food!), to even send a DoorDash gift card or pay for someone else’s food delivery. All of the above acts, other than attending a shower, can be achieved in minutes and with just a few clicks of a keyboard or taps on your smartphone. What is not easy is traveling to your friend, who lives over 1.5 hours away from you by public transport, cleaning her kitchen, making her several home-cooked dishes and teas that you know she will like and savor, and cleaning all that up so she doesn’t have a mess left behind.

I think we really show the people in our lives we genuinely love and care for them when we do the things that are not easy, that actually require real thought, time, and effort. I was chatting with some colleagues about doing this for my friend this week, and they all commented and expressed how amazed they were that I’d do something like this; it’s odd to me because most of them know I love cooking, so it’s really not a strenuous effort on my part. I kind of shrugged. For me, as I stated above, this is meaningful. I want to spend time doing things that make me feel like I’m fulfilling a purpose and giving my life meaning. What do they spend time on that they find meaningful?