Things

My mother talks to me in fruits and vegetables.

On Tuesdays, the first day of the week traditional wet markets are open in Taiwan, red-and-white striped plastic bags will appear in my house, couriered across town by my mother's faithful driver/gofer/handyman. The bags will be filled with all of my children's favorite foods.

Because my husband is from San Diego, and because he is not Taiwanese, it constantly surprises and delights my mother when my children like foods that are very Taiwanese. The foods that she sends over include passion fruits with deep-hued purple skin, sent with handwritten notes reminding me to wait until the skin is puckered before consuming; small, soft guavas with an aroma so sweet and powerful, they perfume the entire house. Once, my mother observed the children clamoring for calamari rings at a family dinner, and ever since, if she finds freshly caught squid at the market, a bag of three or four will also appear, slick and glistening. If you hit it just so, the layer just underneath the translucent skin explodes into what looks like a million tiny stars. That's how you know the squid is still alive. Cucumbers are a staple, as are sweet potatoes and whatever leafy-green vegetables are in season—there is one called "A vegetable" in Taiwanese, which the children find hilarious, and will always ask instead for "B vegetable."

On the days she doesn't go to the market, boxes of fancy-grade fruit will arrive—giant green grapes the size of plums shipped from Japan or a species of wax apples dubbed "Black King Kong," because its skin is a deep red, richer and darker than the rosy skin of its more plebeian cousins. If not boxes of fruit or intricately packaged Taiwanese tea or nougats or the latest award-winning pineapple or moon cakes, there will be takeout containers of various sizes and half-drunk bottles of wine. Judging by the contents of those boxes, or the name of the hotel restaurant printed on the paper bags in which they were carried, I can often guess which friends my parents dined with the previous evening.

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When I first started living on my own in New York City after college, I loved having an almost-empty refrigerator, stocked with only the essentials I needed for the next few days. A visiting friend once opened up my cupboards one after another and grimaced: "You have no snacks!" I like having just what I need. This was before I knew about Marie Kondo or minimalism; for me, it just felt natural and made sense.

I have never liked complication or too much hassle. In fact, when too many things start piling up, my insides start squeezing tight and I feel a physical constriction. In Chinese, hassle is ma fan—a combination of the characters for numbness and irritation. That encapsulates how I physically feel when there are too many things around me. I've never named this feeling as anxiety, but I do think it's a form of it.

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Lately, the things arriving daily at my house have become much more than just fruits and vegetables.

My mother has been retired for twenty years now. The first several years of her retirement, she traveled to remote parts of China and Southeast Asia to add to her collection of children's textiles made by indigenous tribes. She published books on her collection, organized by category—a book on children's hats, a book on baby carriers, a book on purses, another book on baby bibs and collars. She learned about the process of cultivating cotton plants and silk from silkworms, studied the ways dyes were extracted from plants and flowers, observed the different embroidery techniques used in different tribes, translated their signs and symbols into stories. She gathered her collection and organized exhibitions with local museums in Taiwan. She did what I imagine I would do in retirement—all the things she always wanted to do but which the daily minutiae in the life of a working mother prevented. After the books...