Have you ever eaten something and then automatically your brain takes a trip down memory lane? The smell of the food, the preparation of it, and even the taste triggers something. Then suddenly you have memories that you even forgot you had. For me that food was Mr. Noodles. Odd one, defiantly, but the cooking and eating of them brought up two key memories.
At 2 am I am up, hungry, and searching in my kitchen for food, since I got my sleep schedule all our of whack the past week. And I find two packs of vegetable Mr. Noodles way back in the cupboard, I cannot even tell you the last time I have eaten them. Probably back in my late teens, its been so long that I need to read the back of the package to try and figure out how to make these things.
Boil water, add noodles, strain, add the flavour package that contains enough salt to meet your daily requirement in one go, and add some butter (that is a trick my Dad taught me, makes them taste more like food, less like salt).
As I am doing this process, and remembering my Dads trick, the first pot of memories come up (there was actually two different memory pots, but each really should be its own post as they are so different).
Me, probably 7 years old. Standing in my childhood kitchen, dressed ready for school. Two tight braids that reach all the way down my back, mismatched socks. Big brown eyes, years before they where hidden behind glasses, almost at the point of tears.
I’m standing there begging with my mother to send me to school with an uncooked package of Mr.Noodles. No, I do not want her to cook them and put them in my Winnie the Pooh thermos, I want them raw in the package with a can of pop. I don’t even need a lunch bag, I could throw it in the bottom of my backpack and no I didn’t need a recess snack. I was so dead set on this plan. Firm and stubborn, my father temper coming out and through my seven-year-old body. And Guess what, she’s not having it. It is six am, still dark out, and she’s half asleep. The one goal is to get me on the 7:30 bus so she can get a bit more sleep before the family store opens downstairs. No way in hell is she sending her daughter to school with that lunch, what would my teacher think.
Background on this that is important to why I was begging for uncooked noodles and why my mother was so appalled. I grew up on a reservation, an Indigenous community, but my parents insisted I go the white school off the reserve in the small town near by. And to quote my father, there was no way in hell I was going to “dumb dumb high, the rez school as I would turn out dumb as a door post and pregnant.” This was the line I was told since the age of 5 when I begged to not be set “far” away for school. “Far” was 10-minute car ride, but my kid brain saw this as another planet away. I went to preschool on the reserve, had friends and loved it, why did I have to leave it for school.
A lot of native kids went to the school, probably half of my class was native, but there was still this divide between the native and white kids. And in my Dads defense, he and his siblings went to this white school, and the school in our community wasn’t large or really a school yet. Yes, my parents want the best for me, they knew I was smart and in there minds the white school was the best education option.
Back to the Mr. Noodles and lunch melt down, I was begging my mother for this lunch, not because I enjoyed or wanted to eat raw noodles. But because I wanted my lunch to be like the other native kids. My family was fortunate to be well off enough finically that raw noodles was not the only lunch option. But some of my peers where not. And because of this I was labelled different and bullied. Bullied quite harshly, my mother was white, my family lived on the edge of rez in a nice home, my family ran their own successful business, not completely legal, but successful. I had nice clean clothes, lots of toys, and from the outside had the perfect life. But this meant, the native kids didn’t like, they where jealous and there jealously was expressed cruelly. And honestly most of my childhood all my friends where white.
And I stuck out like a sore thumb. Dark hair, eyes and skin. Long hair down my back that my mother braided every morning, I never left my house without it not braided, and hell have no fury like my mother who found out someone upbraided it. None of my friends looked like me, literally growing up they where blond hair blue eyes, 2.5 children two working parents, white households. They didn’t really understand my family or my culture. Or have similar problems to me. What do you mean your water is not brown? What do you mean you have never been confined to your home and not allowed outside to play because of the roaming bear? As much as they tried to pretend, we where the same, bottom line was I was welcome to their house, but most of their families would not allow them to come to mine. Which when your seven really sucks.
My friends where not racist, and for the most part their families weren’t either, they where more scared. Scared of the community I came from and people who inhabited it. I mean my dad was a tall man, who could only hear out of one ear so his talking was always yelling, who had hippy hair and a beard. So, I guess that’s scary, if you live in a small town full of other white people.
So, seven-year-old me decide the best way to fix this problem was to become friends with other native kids. Because summer was coming up and none of my other friends would be coming over for play dates.
And step one in this was to show them, that hey look my lunch is not always amazing. Look I have raw noodles and can of pop too! We can be friends now. I even tried to leave my lunch at home or on the bus or lie that I didn’t have one. But guess what, all this back fired hard. Because if I didn’t have a lunch, the schools first step was to make you call home, and because my parents worked in the store attached to our house, someone at home would always pick up, and before the end of lunch, a new lunch would appear. And it would never be raw noodles and a can of pop.
The person who would drop it off would be my pissed off Father. Who couldn’t understand why I kept loosing my lunch, because he knew I had one when I left the house and walked to the bus stop. And that was a 90 second walk, and I was not that scattered brain to lose a lunch. He didn’t get it; he worked hard and ran a business so I could have good food. Have everything. And he liked that my friends where all white, he thought it was best case scenario. Everything he wanted, his daughter to be well educated and accepted among the white people. Two things he did not have growing up.
How this story ends, I never took raw noodles and a can of pop for lunch. My parents never really understood why I desired to have native friends, or why it mattered. Or ever really got how much I knew I was different because of my race. As much as they tried to shelter me from the racism, I knew.
And during the six years I spent at that school, my girl gang, my friends, all blond hair blue eyed. Over time they did come to my house for play dates for some it took many years. And once they saw my mother who was white it helped, and the fact that our house was on the edge of the rez also helped. We explained my Dads hearing, and no he wasn’t yelling at my friends or their parents, if he was yelling you would know it. I had my birthday parties in other places there were not my home so all my friends would come. I could go to sleepovers at their places, we would all go to day camp together the one week it rotated to the small town outside of the reservation.
Its funny one package of noodles, and my brain at 2 am apparently have a lot to say. I keep telling myself that one day I will write a book about growing up in this life. And finding that balance of existing in two worlds. Maybe one day. But for now, I am going to consume enough salt to meet health Canada's guidelines for two days, eat my noodles with butter and think about the childhood years.