Family Health Mental Health
Pickles Taught Me the Art of Self-Preservation
I was not suspended in a timeless brine like my pickles. I was not a stoic javelin of cellulose waiting to strike a bored palette. My answers would not be in rigidity, in control.
Until the pandemic, I was self-conscious about my homemade pickles. I always julienned them into uniform strips, put them in Pinterest-worthy mason jars, but that’s all I can say to recommend them. In mere days, they would turn bleached and ghastly, becoming spicy enough to induce a coughing fit. The brine would cloud suspiciously. My husband, who adores pickles so much he was teethed on them, resolutely avoided their gaze as he searched for snacks in the fridge.
I make beautiful galettes, free-form pies with bright fillings and attractive rustic crusts. My rice bowls are terrarium-level intricate, with jammy eggs, garlicky stir-fried vegetables, and cubes of marinated tofu.
All to say: I could have cooked anything, but I kept making these terrible pickles.
*
My pandemic pickling was antisocial, but my introduction to pickling was the opposite—an attempt to make a new friend.
AK picked me up at my apartment early. I marveled that she drove stick up and down the staggering hills of San Francisco. The grade can get so steep that it’s not uncommon for streets to have stairs instead of sidewalks. We buzzed across the Bay Bridge, gossiping and sipping our coffees.
The class was at an unassuming Victorian in Oakland. We made our way through the creaking wrap-around porch, the house packed with vats and jars. People gathered into pairs and trios, rich with laugh lines and colorful glasses.
In the sun-bleached backyard, we settled into folding chairs. Our instructor was a blond man dressed head-to-toe in olive green. He was in his thirties, but he leaned back and drawled with the sleepy, wise manner of an elder.
Before this class, pickling had rarely crossed my mind. I grew up in the packaged food era of the 90s. If you mentioned “pickle,” I was more likely to hear the phantom chimes of the The Rugrats theme song, Tommy Pickles tottering and spilling milk, than imagine how a raw cucumber might be preserved. Pickles came exclusively from the glossy aisles of a grocery store; any jar would do. I would grab one without much thought, serene in the knowledge that they would all be uniform.
The idea of making my own was oddly threatening. Wasn’t there a reason they were bought from the store in hermetically sealed jars, with lids my tiny hands always struggled to pop off?
“Is no one going to ask about the B-word?” Our instructor asked. “Botulism,” he clarified when no one answered.
He rattled off safe canning conditions—heat, acid, and that homemade pickles can be stuck straight into the fridge rather than left out on a counter. If we created the right environment, we needn’t worry about attracting lethal bacteria to our dill spears.
“Well, the Botox syndicate won’t like it, but that’s how you keep the bad bacteria away,” he said.
The crowd chuckled, unevenly making the connection: The same microbe that will poison you on a pickle is the very bacteria we use to erase the elevens between our brows.
In terms of defying time, pickling overachieves: It keeps us fed by saving summer nutrients for winter— and it smooths our wrinkles.
*
Perhaps that’s why I thought of pickling nearly a decade later, in the time warp of shelter-in-place. Some turned to sourdough, though I didn’t even try it, repelled by the constant feeding and prodding a starter requires. With my toddler, dog, and too many dying plants, I didn’t need another pet.
I pickled lemons, daikons, cucumbers, carrots, cabbage, in jars and glass Tupperware. I often devoured single pickles over the sink, shoving them into my mouth while goalying my pent-up toddler away from my coffee thermos. Complete with saggy sweatpants and a threadbare T-shirt older than the Obama presidency, it painted the appropriate pandemic-mom tableau.
In terms of defying time, pickling overachieves. In peaceful moments, I would open the fridge door just wide enough to stick my face inside. I stared at my pickles, ignoring the alarm’s chirped warning that I was letting all the cold air out. I was helpless to the virus spiraling through the air of the grocery store, the dentist’s office, my child’s preschool. But with science and refrigeration, I could conquer other microbes, putting them to work, turning produce into pickles.
They were my aspiration, evidence I possessed an unflappable foresight, organization, and canniness. I had everything under control, pandemic or no.
*
Years before the pandemic began, I had realized I might have ADHD from a friend’s tweet. She was diagnosed as an adult and also identifies as an Asian American woman.
ADHD seems to be the exclusive domain of disruptive little boys, and she is anything but. A successful artist and entrepreneur with a huge following, her Instagram feed is an impeccable pastel wonderland. She has a gentle, enthusiastic demeanor.
I resonated with her stories of daydreaming, forgetfulness, and struggles with clutter. Like her, I had been frustrated when professionals told me I was too “high-functioning” for therapy, despite feeling constantly overwhelmed. The stereotype still holds that Asian girls have it all zipped up tight, floating from meeting to meeting with our pristine gel pens, our handwriting neat as a printed page. ADHD is the Asian American five-star recipe for shame and performance anxiety.
My friend’s tweets yanked me back into time, dredging me through a lifetime of cringe-worthy moments. At five years old, I told my class at show and tell that I would often end up inside a room wondering why I’d come there, that I’d mutter my reason over and over while in transit so I wouldn’t forget.
The class regarded me with silence until Ms. G thanked me for sharing and moved on to the next student.
A few years later, Ms. W stopped calling on me because I was, in her words, too eager to show off. I would strain up from my seat when I knew the answer, hand flapping, the wooden desk pressing a line into my torso.
Other teachers sent me home with B- report cards labeling me “bright, but lazy.” I was told to work harder, to care more, to get myself sorted out. If I was given concrete advice, I remember none of it.
I became a militant list maker, straining not to blink as I took notes in class. I relied on complex systems of binders and planners, which scaffolded my disordered memory—until I inevitably lost the relevant notes, or forgot them at school when I needed to study. Just as I’d muttered reminders as a five year old, teenage me scribbled on a notepad in the pitch dark, frantic I would forget all my revelations come morning.
*
A person’s brain changes after childbirth, going dark and then remapping itself in a bloom of new growth. It’s theorized this makes space for a child the same way a parent might clear out a room or nook for a nursery. A whole chunk of brain for a whole new person.
My first child was born a few years before the pandemic. While pregnant, I obsessed over accounts that motherhood brooked no nonsense, that I would become ruthless with my time. I read stories of creative moms navigating the push and pull of priorities, the sleep deprivation, the fear they’re all used up. I hung onto their successes, felt seen by their trials, and had faith I would persevere.
The reassurance sometimes made a mother out as a biologically predestined family Trapper Keeper. I wasn’t anticipating administrative tasks to become easy, but I would have loved to find my brain suddenly game to clear the kitchen counter—without having to jazz myself up like a mountaineer about to summit Half Dome.
It didn’t take long to realize I wouldn’t calmly stride into an octopus-armed proficiency. My sweet and perfect baby never slept more than three hours at a time, and neither did I. I started committing all the ADHD no-no’s I’d defeated for years. While I was better than ever in the heat of the moment—catching babies tumbling off couches, overflowing with furious creative revelations—I regularly left my keys in the door. I wrote down the wrong deadlines on important presentations, embarrassing myself and my team. I left blank one-hour blocks strewn across my calendar, a graveyard of corporate synergy I intended to foster and never made happen.
I again wandered into rooms thinking, what did I come here for? I rarely figured it out.
*
Each week of the early pandemic brought a new set of rituals. One week, it was spraying packages with isopropyl alcohol. The next, vigorous handwashing followed by vigorous lotioning to restore the moisture the handwashing stripped away. It was cloth masks, then surgical masks, then whatever N95, K94, KN95 you could order before everyone else found out they’d been restocked.
I followed any rule the CDC had on offer. I refreshed local case counts, donated when I could. I bought a diffuser, a SAD lamp. I fell asleep with gratitude each night for the company of my husband and son. Many of my local friends had moved away, so we had phone calls and video chats. AK, by now a good friend, was across the world in Sweden, extra cautious because of the lack of protocols.
It was only by losing the commute, the social anxiety, that I truly understood how much I’d been struggling with my sleep deprivation, ADHD, and rebalancing my priorities as a parent. I had spent the two years leading up to the pandemic feeling so out of control. As we all plummeted into some unknown new normal, I saw an eye through the chaos.
Facing my cold pickles in their neat little jars, my cheeks squeezed through the open fridge, I thought, Tell me your secrets. Teach me permanence, how to bear hardship, how to nourish people in lean times. Make me too sour for defeat, give me a chilled and quiet strength.
*
The unease crept in at the margins. Influencers on social media shared Instagram stories at crowded midnight raves, declaring “my body, my choice” and refusing to mask. The news finally seemed to cover a thin slice of the deadly force used against Black Americans. My feeds filled with videos of Asian elders bloodied up by racist attacks, women who looked just like me were singled out and murdered by strangers. I took to scrolling frantically past the videos, and leaving my phone on silent so I wouldn’t receive messages from well-meaning friends.
“We’re not equipped to see how racist people are this often. We’re not supposed to see how little people care about the community, about keeping others safe,” I told my therapist.
She knew of my aspirations for control and gently disapproved. She urged me to focus on what I could actually control and to be realistic, particularly around what I could control in myself. I could make sure I ate regularly and got as much rest possible. I could follow protocols, take care of loved ones, and spend less time doom-scrolling.
I had spent the two years leading up to the pandemic feeling so out of control. I could not make a bunch of Americans I didn’t know want a vaccine or wear a mask. I could not stop the virus from mutating into new variants. I would not be able to prevent a determined racist from hurting me or my loved ones.
I was not suspended in a timeless brine like my pickles. I was not a stoic javelin of cellulose waiting to strike a bored palette. My answers would not be in rigidity, in control.
*
A year into the pandemic, we gave my oldest his first haircut. I knew the milestone was coming; I naively thought it would announce itself, that O’s hair would start covering his eyes, or become long enough to trail after him like a cape.
Instead, it puffed out like a cloud, diaphanous, each hair so fine it was nearly invisible. It was reminiscent of Bernie Sanders’ hair at outdoor venues during his most impassioned speeches. Every week I thought, Maybe I’ll cut it next week, until O was nearly three.
There was no inciting event. When we decided to cut it, it didn’t even reach his shoulders. O calmly perched in the shower on a tiny stool, chattering to me about a video on his iPad as I snipped carefully around his ears.
I’ve always been grossed out by the tooth jewelry popular in Victorian times, revived by certain brave modern parents. I logically understand the nostalgia of carrying your child’s castoffs as a keepsake, but even if that tooth had technically grown and lived inside of my body for almost a year, I can’t get behind wearing a shed molar on a chain or ring.
However, confronted with the skirt of my baby’s cut hair on the shower floor, I suddenly understood. I gathered up some of the longest strands and tied the lock with a string, placing it in a translucent paper envelope. I swept up the rest of it, and we took pictures of O smiling, commemorating the occasion.
The baggie of hair went into a box with other keepsakes: blurry ultrasounds of O’s twenty-week prenatal foot, our matching plastic ID bracelets from his birth. I was surprised to already have so many bits of evidence of O after two years and nine months.
The keepsakes, the Google Photos album, the drawings and audio recordings—no matter how studiously my husband and I capture an experience, seek to preserve it, something is always lost. We jar things up to stop time and build resilience against future troubles, to preserve each moment, each milestone we speed through.
Humans will pickle almost anything—cucumbers, carrots, fruit, feet, eggs. Our desperation to preserve, to survive, is a pessimism recognizing lean times are coming, as well as a naivety pushing against the Goliath forces of famine, pandemics, or time.
This is what I ended up learning from my pickles. Our keepsakes will sustain us through the seasons, but they will never be perfectly preserved. They will be tinged with the many years that follow, misremembered, edited and condensed until they are almost too acidic to bear.
I mostly make quick pickles these days, some sliced cucumbers in vinegar, chucked into the fridge for an hour. My husband will actually eat them, and they green up an otherwise meat-carb meal to give some semblance of a balanced diet.
I will surely turn to my ghastly brine jars again, but for now I am content to let time slip through my fingers: to notice a fine square of sunlight and tell no one about it, to watch my children from afar without eavesdropping, heads bent in conversation.
