Earwig HIV

As a high school graduation present my paternal grandmother, my ‘Grammy,’ gifted me a good quality suitcase with a fun ‘Congrats, Graduate!’ card that told me to be sure to use this suitcase, to be more specific I think her beautiful cursive handwriting read something closer to ‘use the hell out of this suitcase!’ This tracks, as this is the same go-getter who once sent some racy photos and a handwritten note pleading to be featured in Playboy magazine after having four children.

Thanks to Anthony Bourdain, ‘Iron Chef’ and that consistent gnawing hunger from always being hungry I knew from an early age I wanted to be a chef and work in kitchens however, these dreams always came with consistent doubt; doubt in myself mixed with the abject, cold lack of support from my dad. Sometimes I’d nod along when he urged me to go to the city community college, and just stay home to ‘figure things out’ like my happy-at-home, unmotivated sister. On the flip side, Grammy saw my spark and foresaw the sad place I’d be going if I stayed with my unemployed, artist father.

To this day I gotta hand it to her for seeing my potential and unselfishly giving me that invisible permission slip to get away from her son – to get out of dodge and don’t come back, cheering me with gusto while my Dad glumly looked on.

It took me nearly the entirety of my senior year of school to break it to my Dad that my plan was indeed to leave and move in with my maternal aunt and uncle on Vashon Island, Washington to pursue those greener pastures that I hoped would yield an education, stability, and that dream kitchen career. Where I knew deep down I was always his favorite kid and that he’d miss me personally, the icky part of me moving out also meant he would no longer be getting any money from my feeble part-time jobs for the occasional bill, cigarettes, or scotch. Leaving my Dad in this semi-monetary lurch made me powerfully anxious about being transparent with my plans as I was really more the parent in our house; nurturing kids for a successful future was no more his forte than a cat trying to take care of taxes. The final cherry on that trauma sundae was his stoic, vaguely hostile, avoiding reaction to it all that made it obvious that the trajectory of my future would be dangerous waters to tread. I would not be comforted, supported, or cheered on in leaving home for these reasons.

Roughly a week out of graduating I had packed up that suitcase that Grammy gave me, overstuffed my school backpack and loaded up a trash bag full of clothes while my Dad tip-toed past my room, absolutely avoiding the entire situation. It was quite clear that whatever I wanted to do I was welcome to do so – but I would be doing it without him which included packing alone, walking to and closing out my bank account alone, I even set up my own little ‘going away’ amongst friends at a different house. My Dad didn’t understand my rush and honestly neither did I, once everyone was on the same page about my plan to move in up north my (maternal) Grandpa declared nearly the same day as graduation that he’d show up the following weekend. I think I tried to finagle a bit more time to hang with friends or my high school boyfriend, but I don’t believe there has ever been a time you could sway my grandfather once he was resolute, especially when it came to getting away from one of the major pains of his life, my father.

Grandpa showed up a handful of days later by seven am. Rubbing our eyes and emotionally uncomfortable, my Dad looking positively sapped while he helped me pull my things outside. Once he got close enough to my Grandpa he stopped as though a natural forcefield kept them separate, and Grandpa took all items over, alone, hoisting it all into the pick-up truck quietly. Not that I had much, but it all fit easily with a couple bungees and we were done in a time that felt too quick and unreasonable to just leave.

I hugged my Dad while my now physically impatient Grandpa hopped in the truck, and with a wave my sad father was in the rearview mirror. Grandpa leapt straight to business about our trips itinerary and resolutely said we’d be having lunch near the Capitol but that there were snacks in the cooler if I got hungry. Finally, with some emotional intelligence to a stunned kid he gave me what felt like a verbal post-it: that he was proud of me. That this would be good. And that’s all either of us mentioned about my move the whole of the trip.

I was close with my grandfather and so the hours spent with him, my books, and even his sometimes tedious but predictable radio choices made the trip a comfortable, exciting time. For an added thrill of futility, I brought most of Moby’s catalog in a too-large CD binder in hopes that it bridged enough genres and old samples to sway Grandpa out of talk radio or grainy swing songs that would sometimes peek through that AM radio static. I had never felt such freedom.

One of my first priorities upon landing on Vashon was getting a job, and one of those very first jobs was to be a prep cook at an old Victorian-looking house that had its business as a high end B&B called the ‘Back Bay Inn.’

I say prep cook very loosely here – I think the real title was ‘let’s take a chance on this oddly confident child and pay her mainly in food’ but thankfully I had that youthful ego to catch on fast and become something that more resembled a prep cook after a few weeks. My first real paycheck (as opposed to earning $5 an hour under the table at a culinary studio in SoCal,) wasn’t even $200 but I must have stared at it for a solid five minutes. I’d never seen anything so beautiful, it was so much money to me, and I was almost loathe to part with it and deposit it at the bank.

My cooking career started at the Back Bay with my purview being your basic level one salad and cold prep items: whip butter and cream, chop lettuce, slice berries, set the line for both savory and sweet items. After a time the chef started to expand my training into hot food items and one of his specialties was clam chowder.

Rejecting the ‘Progresso’ can vibe, Curtis’s clam chowder was nothing but heavy cream, a small amount of roux to thicken as opposed to an amount that could spackle a hole in the wall, fresh thyme, and fresh lemon juice. This is where I learned that just a teensy bit of lemon juice can take a creamy soup and highlight the more subtle flavors like that savory thyme or the sweetness of cream without a citrus twang. It just makes it that much better, a more balanced, fuller flavor.

One day, standing over the stove and stirring the aromatic onions and celery I turned the heat low so I could step away for a moment and grab a number ten can of chopped clams, opening the lid with a persnickety, unprofessional handheld can opener. In professional kitchens, the #10 is the biggest can of food we make, called so because its volume contains between nine and twelve cups of food or, ten to be quick about it.

Lids to cans are terrifically sharp; not only are they sharp but they’re thin enough to keep slicing since nothing on the lid widens like a knife blade to slow its momentum. Girl will only stop when she feels like it.

Imagine my surprise when that shitty can opener didn’t fully do its job and I tried to wedge the stuck lid up with my right thumb and index finger, and then imagine that surprise shifting swiftly to shock when that briny, funky clam lid shot straight through the meat of my thumb.

My teenage self shot straight to panic. I didn’t know then that fingertips are dramatic as hell, they bleed like a fountain at the faintest provocation and they do so for way longer than you’d imagine they should. I could’ve drowned myself in a short bucket over the humiliation had I the forethought to do so, instead I just bit back tears and imagined my career as good as over because I was a moron who just did the dumbest, rookiest thing ever. What a way to go.

The patient and always kind Chef Curtis watched the whole thing, wiping the dust off the first aid box within seconds of watching my accident and pulled me aside with a chuckle. I’m sure my injury amused him the same way I now find non-life-threatening kitchen accidents amusing – generally they’re good for a young cook’s ego, and if you are cruel (which many of us cooks are) there’s always a lesson to teach students in how fast they were moving and therefore how careless they were: i.e. it’s rare for a can lid to strike twice if you’re willing to learn the lesson. If you’re not cruel, it’s just a good deed to make a student of culinary feel better about serious injury because office jobs won’t scar you – but kitchens? You will be injured, you will be scarred, and it’s up to you to let those youngsters know the gauntlet they’re in for and cheer them up about it. It’s usually genuinely and weirdly sweet in most instances.

I thought of that big can of chopped clams the other day. I thought of how when I got home and pathetically held my wounded thumb up to my saintly aunt and uncle and spun the harrowing tale, and how Aunty called her nurse friend Sue about when to seek stitches. I squirmed with my negative levels of self-esteem at all this attention, ‘it was just a cut!’ I protested. My regret for saying anything at all was full volume while I could hear Sue arguing through the phone receiver. “But you don’t know where those clams have been!!” she countered, telling my aunt to just run me up to the island urgent care for a tetanus shot at the very least. Now.

Further reflecting on that can of clams, nurse Sue, my aunt re-taping my thumb up after I got my first tetanus shot, and how despite my discomfort and embarrassment a big part of me felt so nurtured it bordered between joyful tears and nausea. Several people had intervened on my behalf just to take care of me: and that act had begun the process of re-programming my previous years of not making noise, not having a personality, that no matter what I was always fine, but that I mattered in a single instant. It was a humbling, wonderful feeling that exploded in my mind like tie-dye on a white shirt, changing me forever. Memories of my dad started fading and I began leaning into being supported, nurtured, and guided.

All those warm, nurtured feelings that I can still easily conjure from my youth flooded my mind while I waited alone in urgent care just the other week: I had chopped straight through the pad of my left pinky finger with my sparkly new, sharp gardening clippers after trying to clean up my unruly tomato plants. Of course it bled like a fountain, and in the same nervous instant I recalled that one pretty recent time when I found an earwig in my new napa cabbage plant and freaked, I didn’t want to touch the bug so I clipped and clipped and clipped at it with these very clippers until it was in several pieces, then clipped at the compost/dirt pile to swipe the earwig guts off.

To be fair, as a grown human I know that I could grab an earwig, pinch it off a plant and chuck it with no problem, I frequently do that when I find other pests and it doesn’t bother me at all. My phobia of earwigs comes from a tender age when I grabbed a soda from my grandma and grandpa’s fridge and then went to their pantry for a straw.

My grandma preferred all her beverages with a straw and my grandpa would buy boxes of loose, unwrapped plastic straws from the grocery store, pop the lid halfway, and then keep the box in the pantry for easy grabbing. Picture a cuter version of me, imagine a little ponytail with those plastic bow berets that were so cute in the early 90’s bounding into the kitchen for a drink, grabbing a straw, popping it into her diet Sprite and sucking up the first frosty sip.

Only this sweet, crooked-toothed child didn’t just notice the refreshing diet Sprite, she nearly choked when she got pinched by something on the inside of her mouth and subsequently spat out an earwig that was hiding inside the straw.

Trust, there hasn’t been a single straw since then, wrapped, unwrapped, or any kind of otherwise that I don’t blow through first.

Anyway.

Feeling ill about my new dirt and earwig-laced cut and unable to recall the date of my most recent tetanus shot there I was at urgent care, lovingly thinking of my husband who after I told him this earwig story and how I clipped one into a bunch of pieces looked me dead in the eye and suggested I should be worried about contracting earwig HIV. Only he didn’t say H-I-V like an adult, he called it the earwig HIV, like HIM but with a V, fully pronouncing the word for the sake of comedy. I would be lying if I didn’t actually mention that part to the doctor when I finally got back to the room to get a once-over; he very sincerely listened while maintaining eye contact, and remarked that as far as he was concerned there should be no illness from a clipped dead bug but prescribed me antibiotics anyway.

In a full-ranging twenty-year culinary career some of these ‘setbacks’ have thankfully instilled me with emotional wisdom like what Chef Curtis showed me, going hand-in-hand with a gracious and kind attitude I have with all young cooks now. I’ve been lucky enough to do exactly what I want to do career wise, and I can’t help but reflect how very different life would’ve turned out had some saucy dish not gifted me a suitcase when I was seventeen.

Also, some props here should go out to incredibly patient doctors who listen to women closer to forty than thirty mention earwig HIV with a hint of seriousness. God love ’em.