Soup is the panacea that fixes everything
Soup has been a running theme for me throughout this lockdown period.
I’ve alluded to both its symbolic and literal sustenance several times in columns, e-mails and even dashed-off WhatsApp messages to friends.
I’m seeing soup referenced all over the place, from sustenance at soup kitchens to recipe-sharing among the well-heeled.
Soup seems to be so much more than soul food.
Why? A couple of moons ago, I dedicated a column to my mom’s vegetable and lentil soup, and also wrote about it on Facebook.
Within an hour of posting about it, that fast became the most popular thing that I’d ever written on my Facebook page. People loved it.
Everybody wanted the recipe for mom’s soup — and everybody loved my mom for being the mom who made soup.
What is it about mothers and food?
The maternal aspect of it is obvious, since we are alive to be loved and to love in return — and who has learnt more beautifully the art of unconditional love, than mothers? But it’s more than that. I have never seen such an overjoyed, communal “aaaaaah” in response to anything I’ve written.
Boys, girls, 60-plussers and 20-somethings: they all wanted mom’s soup or were thrilled that at least one of us had some.
Love is a complex, mysterious energy that tends to dilute and disguise itself as we forget how powerful, authentic and pure it actually is.
There are also a thousand forms of pseudo-love, such as infatuation, or subconscious, shared ego-boosting (Hollywood couplets spring to mind).
I’ve noticed how easily we “love” our friends and fawn over our girlie friendships as well — but how easily and quickly we turn against each other when our expectations are dashed.
But the power of maternal soup is the real deal — and here’s why I think it works for us: There is nothing more empowering than knowing that you are loved.
And with few exceptions, maternal love is our introduction to the first chapter of that complex energy.
Love is an emotion so deep, so potent, that it can just as easily land you in hot water, or break your heart, or cause you to drunk-dial people in a fit of pique.
But through broken, spiteful school friendships, lost-in-transit adult connections, relocations, marriages, divorces and all the varied endings to love’s beginnings, there is always that pot of soup. When people are poor and hungry, or it’s cold and we’re lonely, tired or desiring comfort, soup provides.
And during this time, when we can’t tell what’s going to happen next (not that we ever could, which is a sobering lesson in itself, since we always thought that we were invincible in our ability to plan), it is no minor victory to remember our mom’s soup, or to donate a bag of vegetables for a charity pot.
Because, somehow, mysteriously, love and soup combined are a heady mix.