Tom YumMYLA ONCE THOUGHT Tom Yum was a cook on the cruise ship Papa works on—a man named Tom, who made yummy food. It turned out tom yum is a soup her father likes to eat, whenever his ship docks at the port of Phuket in Thailand.
Once a week, Myla’s mother makes tom yum, while Papa orders it at his favorite Thai canteen. Papa calls at dinnertime, and Mama puts her cell phone on speaker mode, and they all have dinner “together.” This is mahal, but they do it anyway, because Papa misses his girls, and they miss him too.
Mama starts cooking by boiling water. Myla always looks at the water, sloshing gently in the pot, and wonders what it must be like to spend most of your time on a boat, with water forever moving underneath. “Isn’t it hard just to stay standing?” she once asked, but Papa sa
