On the Kitchen Table

My family calls me Drew ever since my younger brother could not pronounce my name when little. I remember I used to say Dario many times as fast as I could as a game to help him pronounce it and he picked up Drew. I like my nick name, it’s catchy. My boss hated it, "Dario is more important" he used to tell me. "A chef named Drew deserves no admiration but Dario, well that commands respect. Take my name for example Ramon, that's a powerful name. My wife calls me Rami" he said to me one day while I was chopping an onion just the way he thought me to; "but you think I let anyone call me that? No! Sr. Ramon, so they never forget who is in charge here." 

Sr. Ramon was the head chef at the restaurant I worked at. Mother had lost her job in the US and had stopped sending money leaving grandma struggling to make ends meet for us. The job didn't pay much but I was learning all I needed to become a chef and at the end of the day I could always bring back home some food from the restaurant. No matter how late I arrived at night grandma would always wait to sit with me while I had dinner. "Sorry mijito" she said one day while sitting at the same kitchen table I watched her cook so many times. "You should be at the university now, studying and making a future for yourself. If I were any younger"...I stopped her right there and said, "you have given me plenty and I am getting an education. I will be a chef one day, the best one grandma and I owe it all to you, you'll be proud of me." Grandma never got to see me run my restaurant in the city, she was long gone by then but there is not one day while I cook that I don't feel her presence right next to me.

Related story: A Boy Named Drew