Chop taro leaves and boil in water for one hour. Drain leaves and add grated coconut, lime juice, ginger, salt, garlic, and onion. Boil for another four minutes. Add the diluted coconut milk and Tabasco sauce. Remove from stove. Serve with rice.

The Gift

The Gift

Outside the kitchen the taro leaves have grown thick, probably too thick to be tasty. I open the drawer next to the sink and pull out the sharpest knife. It’s the knife my mother used to make her golai hagun sune, the same one I hid from my brother a month ago.

I pass over the oldest leaves with the curly edges, choosing the fresh young ones. Before I finish cutting the first stem, I remember an old Chamorro song my mother hummed often and the tune finds its way to my lips.

My father shakes the net by the cabana and a coconut escapes to the ground. With his machete, Tata cuts the husk in half with one clean whack. When my mother made the dish, he’d look up at her, pretending like he was going to chop the coconut in a million pieces. But of course he didn’t. Then he laughed and hugged her.

Today he works quietly as he carefully pulls the husk away. He takes the round shell from the center and makes a hole before draining the milk into the yellow bowl.

After I chop the onions, Tata and I take turns grating the coconut until our fingers feel raw. But the pain doesn’t bother us much. Tomorrow at the baby fiesta, Auntie’s guests will have some golai hagun sune and Monday, Frank will eat some of his favorite dish. I can hardly wait to see their faces when they discover the dish we made. I won’t even let it bother me when Auntie says something like, “See, Isabel, I’ll make a suruhana of you after all.” For I know that making my mother’s best recipe has nothing to do with becoming a healer, but everything to do with love.

Tata sings. I sing. Our voices become one. I remember when I was a little girl, sitting in the kitchen, watching my mother from my book, wondering, Why the fuss? Why go through this much trouble to make such a dish?

Now I know why.

Author’s Note

Author’s Note

I spent my fifth- and sixth-grade years on Guam. Those two years proved magical. Coconuts and hibiscus grew in our yard. We swam and snorkeled all year long. I attended fiestas, explored caves, experienced typhoons and earthquakes.

Best of all, I learned what it was like to live among people of a different culture because each weekday the school bus drove me to P. C. Lujan Elementary School, where I attended classes with Chamorro and with other military kids.