Welcome to Emergence Magazine's podcast. I'm Emanuel Von Lee, executive editor of Emergence

magazine. Each week we feature a new interview, narrated essay, or story exploring the threads

connecting ecology, culture, and spirituality.

Kalyani Mom is a Sundance-winning documentary filmmaker.

Her films include A River Changes Course, Lost World, and the Fight for Arang Valley.

Born in Batambong, Cambodia, during the Khmer Rouge regime, Kalyani immigrated to the United States in 1981 with her family. In this essay, Kalyani recalls the way her mother nourished and

sustained her family while living in refugee camps on the Thai border, preparing umami soups, chicken rice, and fried noodles. Years later,

as Kalyani cooks for her husband, a mother-in-law, who will have fallen ill during the pandemic,

she reflects on food as a conduit for healing and love, and shares her mother's recipe for pickled

lime soup.

My mother gave us a jar of her pickled limes a few months ago, which I discover hiding in the back of our kitchen cupboard, as I consider what to make for dinner this evening.

Only two pickled limes remain.

I sigh, wondering when I will be able to get more with strict social distancing rules in place.

I remove a lime, placing it on the cutting board, and cut it in half. I admire the thick syrup that oozes out of the starry compartments that hold the lime together.

This sugary syrup is an indication that the lime is pickled and fermented well, a long, drawn-out

process that takes my mother six months to complete, a feat only for the patient.

I return one half of the lime to the jar.

If I ration carefully, I will be able to make three more pots of sour chicken soup with lemon grass,

ginger, shallots, star anise, and pickled lime.

In early March before the shelter-in-place orders, my husband David became sick with

coronavirus-like symptoms, a cough, a sore throat, and fever.

A few days afterwards his 81-year-old mother, who has been living with us for the past year,

...