It all started because I wanted to eat a bowl of fresh handmade noodles.

I wasn’t sure what possessed me but I suddenly had this very strong urge to make my own noodles at home. Fueled with determination after binge watching noodle making tutorials, I grabbed my keys and walked to the supermarket, bread flour and eggs on the top of my list.

And then, the unexpected happened. As soon as I mixed the bread flour with eggs and water, the scent of the dough filled the air. It was a scent so strangely familiar that I was heady with nostalgia. 

It wasn’t as if I used to make homemade noodles when I was younger as that was my first attempt to do so. The scent reminded me of my aunt’s - my father’s older sister - old noodle restaurant my family and I frequently visited when I was a little girl.

In my own kitchen, with my right hand sticky from the mixture of flour, eggs and water, I stared at the dough so hard as if it would tell me a secret. I inhaled greedily, taking in the scent of my childhood I had just rediscovered. My mind drifted to the past, my kitchen in Paris transformed into my aunt’s humble noodle restaurant in my hometown of Surabaya, lined with long rectangular tables and red plastic chairs. The slurping of noodles suddenly became so audible all around me. The sound of cooks pounding on the noodle dough from the kitchen was blaring. The steam coming out of the kitchen so distinct I could almost feel the heat. And then, there was that indisputable smell: the scent of flour and water mixing together, the first step to noodle making forever imprinted in my mind subconsciously. 

What magical power certain scents have. Our sense of smell is the closest we have to time travel.

My aunt - the one owned the noodle restaurant - was such a character. She would kiss my siblings and I so vigorously every time we saw her, to a point where I would run away from her to avoid having her lipstick marks all over my cheeks. She spoke so very loudly, like she was afraid you might not hear what she had to say. She drove herself everywhere she wanted to go, no matter the distance. The woman knew how to cook so well that mere memories of her dishes make my stomach growl.

She is in her 60s now, and she is no longer that woman from my memories. Her noodle restaurant is no longer there. She no longer speaks like she wants you to hear her, if anything, she barely speaks at all. She does not cook anymore, in fact, she no longer does most of the things she used to do.

We don’t quite know what really happened to her. My guess would be: life. Life is what happened to her.

Standing in my kitchen with a bowl of noodle dough that was starting to form between my fingers, grief was the last thing I expected to feel. Grief for the lost kisses from my aunt I tried so hard to hide away from. Grief for the noodle restaurant where I remember tasting the best noodle in my life. Grief for my aunt’s loud voice booming from every corner of every room she was in. Grief for my long gone childhood when my aunt was still herself. Grief for the lost opportunity for me to ever get to know the woman that she was.

When my noodle dough was forming a smooth ball, I took another deep breath, set on holding on to the scent. As I shaped the dough with a rolling pin, I thought of the strong woman who unknowingly shaped my definition of being a woman. When I boiled the freshly made noodles, steam manifesting in the air, I promised myself it wouldn’t be the last time I made my own handmade noodles.

As I sat in front of the bowl of noodles I had made, chicken and mushroom on top of it, I thanked my aunt for the countless bowls of delicious noodles I had enjoyed that came out of her kitchen.