Normally, this photo would be captioned by #teeshlikestocook and #teesheats. But for today, let me tell you what happened outside the frame.

While I was taking this photo, my mom was throwing a tantrum insisting that I don’t love her and I’m trying to kill her by overdosing her with medicine. She has vomited a few times this morning but she refuses to take what the doctor prescribed. After hearing all the things she told me (out of pain, out of suffering from cancer, out of I don’t know where – about my “attempts” to kill her because I don’t love her and that our house help cares for her more since I leave on weekdays to go to work so I can afford to put my brother through university, have a job with HMO for dependents that has paid for half my mom’s treatments and pay bills), I went to the fridge and took out ingredients I can work with so I can cook myself lunch while the sound of my mom crying/shouting gibberish plays in the background.

I sautee garlic, onion, and ground pork in ¼ cup of butter as she throws everything she could reach around the room while the house help try to calm her. I put in oyster sauce and a pack of corn and carrots while she demands for buko juice and negotiates that she’s not going to drink any medicine without it. I pour this over a bowl of plain white rice as she tells the house help to not leave her because all her children has left her alone. I turn a piece of hard boiled egg into garnish by slicing it to pieces as she calls out to her dead parents to take her with them. I take this photo quickly and go back to her bedside as I have calmed down enough to not let her words get to me, and negotiated for an hour until I convinced her to take her meds.

Now I can have my lunch. It’s the little victories.