“Be careful, Buddy. Do you remember how I showed you to do that safely?” I asked as I carefully added thinly sliced kumquat and strips of pandanus leaves to the heated water in the deep stone bowl at the edge of the fire.
Buddy looked up at me and nodded. “I remember, Papa. Don’t worry.”
The pandanus leaf strips and kumquat slices would steep and flavor the water, giving us a nice warm drink to enjoy with our dinner. The kumquat slices wouldn’t go to waste either; I would arrange them atop our fish after it was cooked. These were trivial details, and we didn’t talk about it, but I noticed the smiles of appreciation at the artfully put-together plates when I distributed them.
Ah, the art of survival. It’s the little things that make life enjoyable, and what’s the point of surviving if no
