This was the outfit I put together for a lunch date with Jordan and a friend. It’s been a while since I’ve made lunch plans with a friend. I believe the last time I made lunch plans was late mid-pandemic when invitations to public places followed with a, “let me know what you’re comfortable with. Either way, I’m good if you’re good.” You stood on the line of wanting to be safe, but needing to get out. Mask were worn and taken off only when eating. That feels so long ago, but it feels like it’s just a contiuation of a long time line of messiness. Life seems to be a shit-storm of crazy for many folks, myself included. It’s so good to speak to another person with whom you can understand each others’ life craziness.

And it’s just as good to eat at a Korean restaurant and laugh at each other for not knowing how to eat with Korean chopsticks. I told my friend that I lived in South Korea before immigrating to the States, and joked that I had no excuse. My friend didn’t know this life detail about me. Then Jordan joked that my 2 year old self should’ve done better. I ate my meal with the spoon and chopstick in the way my Filipino parents taught me; to use the fork (in this case, chopsticks) to push food onto the spoon. And my friend braved up and asked for a fork and joked that as an American, they needed to be able to shovel their food into their mouth. There’s so much multicultural acknowledgement in our lunch experience based simply on the utensil we were taught to eat with. You probably didn’t know that there could be much to learn for utensil talk, but it’s in the small details in which we can learn more about each other. It’s the kind of conversations and awareness that helps a person feel seen and heard.