Goodbye, Vitamin

Cooking is an important motif in the text. Ruth learns to cook as a way to care for her father and to try to exert some control over her father’s declining memory. When Ruth first arrives home, she is surprised to find that her mother, who “once made all our meals from scratch” (14), no longer cooks. Annie blames herself for Howard’s Alzheimer’s, thinking that it was “years of cooking in aluminum pots, cooking with canned goods, that led to the dementia” (14). When Ruth moves back home, she quickly grows tired of takeout and finds a new passion for cooking as she reads Alzheimer’s online forums and learns about ingredients that can aid in preventing memory loss. She begins to view food and cooking as something tangible she can do to help her father’s symptoms–“A diet can’t reverse harm that’s already done, I know. But what if it could halt the decline?” (85)–as well as a way to connect with him.

When Ruth makes her first dish, a cobbled-together spaghetti with tomato and almond sauce, she writes about the elation she feels when Howard leaves his study to join her at the table:

Suddenly there is pasta and there is sauce and the semblance of a real meal [...] Against all odds he follows me down the stairs and takes a seat at the set table. Dad eats the pasta, and at first I am too stunned to join him. I can hardly believe my luck” (60).

She feels happy for the rest of the night after sharing this meal with Howard and makes it her mission to serve him food that will support healthy memory function.

Ruth admittedly goes overboard in some of her recipes, which corresponds with her anxiety about Howard’s condition. After reading that jellyfish can promote memory retention, Ruth searches high and low for a grocery store that carries it and then proceeds to cook a jellyfish-centric meal: “Jellyfish salad, Thai-style. Jellyfish soup. Jellyfish fritters. Jellyfish pickles. Jellyfish spaghetti, with jellyfish noodles and jellyfish sauce. The eaters are not exactly enthusiastic, but they are, at least, polite” (113). As her father’s illness continues to progress despite Ruth’s cooking, Ruth learns to let go of her anxiety around food and finds new ways to use food to connect with her father, such as pleasure:

Today I cooked you spaghetti and the sauce tasted plain and sour. Sugar and fat are bad for you. I didn’t want to include anything bad. But today you said, Think of all the mice the scientists are studying: all those mice with Alzheimer’s [...] They forget many things, but they never forget how much they like peanut butter (168).

Without directly saying so, Howard reminds Ruth that he still wants basic, human pleasures such as good-tasting food and that Ruth need not cling so tightly to her anxiety about not wanting to give him anything “bad.” In this quote, he shows Ruth that while his illness may progress, there are parts of him that will remain the same. As Ruth and the family find a better balance in caring for Howard, Ruth includes more positive food memories with Howard: buying fries and milkshakes and In-N-Out, roasting a stolen chicken on the rotisserie, and eating the emergency canned peaches together.