I was craving pan dulce the last several weeks and could not bring myself to get out of the house, much less to drive to a local panaderia. At this time, I made myself busy by applying to a number of jobs ambitiously. I placed deadlines over myself, saying things like, “I have to get this done, just one more cover letter, one more search,” as if my unhealthy sense of urgency made all the difference. I was hungry and driven. I had to satisfy my urge to produce results and indulge in comfort, so I did just that by resorting to chocolates scattered across our dining table while reviewing job postings online. In the back of my mind, Father’s Day was approaching and I could feel the wave of grief slowly creep in. I was doing everything I could to resist grief’s pull —that is until I could not anymore, until I found myself anxious and breathing heavy inside Northgate Market.
“Ever since my mom died, I cry in H Mart.” - Michelle Zauner
In the first chapter of Crying in H Mart, Michelle Zauner opens up about her grief when shopping at a Korean grocery store symbolic of her mother. Zauner beautifully articulates her relationship to food as a Korean-American woman sharing that what you find in H Mart, you can never find in Trader Joe’s. For Zauner, the food court, the Korean snacks, the vibrant three generations of Asian American families eating inside H Mart signify home. They take Zauner back to a time spent with her mom when she was alive, before she had cancer, before she died. The grocery store became a representation of the tangible love between Zauner and her mother that she experiences now in life after her mother’s death. I didn’t realize I would enter into a Mexican grocery store feeling the same. I too would find myself crying in Northgate after remembering Papi.
“Camille…I think I’m losing my mind.”
“Babe, you’re grieving.” - Camille Hernandez
In my mind, my visit to Northgate was not going to send me spiraling and checking out for a week after an emotional breakdown. Instead, I thought I was there to pick up nopales and pan dulce and call it a day. Yet if there is anything I am learning, it is that the body remembers and when it does, grief is to be held ever so gently here. Grief has her own timeline and I must listen. I am thankful I had Camille and Epi as reminders to show myself grace and ease as the waves of grief. Friends like Alma and J showing concern when I overworked self in the job hunt. This was not something the tools of our capitalist western yt man could soothe with harshness, criticism, perfection, and detachment. I had to fully embrace all that I was feeling in remembrance with gentleness unashamedly. I look back and realize this was my first time stepping into Northgate after my dad died, it was my first time buying and cooking nopales again, smelling the menudo and pan dulce he loved in the food court, and it would be my first time looking at the beautiful Brown faces he enjoyed talking to at the market. Of course it would be hard because I am operating and moving in love.
Grief means starting over again. Grief is vulnerability with open wounds forever healing.
The tenderness I have for my father is only increasing as time passes by which at times makes my grief feel overwhelming as much as increasing. In these instances, I don’t want to keep running from my sad emotions (though my instinct is to avoid), I want to continue honoring my body, my feelings, and the waves of grief.
Here I realize I can’t do anything, instead I am forced to stop and brace the wave in its complexity. I stop to feel. I step in my humanity and most of all, to love in my loss. - Heidi Lepe in “Rituals of Remembrance”
Somatic mindfulness, is a new art I am practicing every time I feel a shift in my body and energy during these waves. I try to stay present and acknowledge my nervous system —when my heart is racing, when I must sit and let my tears flow, when I feel the need to hold silence, when I feel anxious. All these senses are important as it means our nervous system is telling us something, and for me it is usually saying I am dreading the wave of grief coming/at hand and missing my father. It is here where my sister, Millie encourages me to acknowledge the following: “I am experiencing this feeling. A holiday is coming up and I know this is going to be hard.” I am thankful my sister offered a script I could repeat to myself to guide me into further somatic mindfulness. It becomes less scary, when you acknowledge that things are going to be hard, when you invite others as a guide through the waves and when you prioritize gentleness over yourself.
Who knows if my sweet tooth craving self sabotaged me into visiting Northgate that night. Or if I was looking for a sense of home in the smells, the food, the queso, and pan dulce Northgate had to offer. In some way I wonder if I wanted to connect with my father before Father’s Day by visiting a little piece of Mexico in a grocery store. I don’t know. I only know that I transported back to a time where I felt Papi’s joy and light inside Northgate, a time where I could see him well and not scarred by the physical and mental trauma of cancer. It felt bittersweet and heartbreaking being there alone yet my body needed comfort, she needed to acknowledge the hard of Father’s Day and I got my pan dulce. I got my nopales too introducing them to Mathi’s tastebuds, imagining Papi proud of me as I carried on our love through food and culture to our bebe in the family. Like Zauner in H Mart, I will be crying in Northgate.