The Soup at the Door

Or: 
The Color of Fairy Tales

Today was the fourth day since I began to take antibiotic.  According to my doctor I should feel better and better from now on.  I put faith in him because he looks to me more like Santa Claus than a dentist. 

I went to campus in the morning for two meetings and came back in the late afternoon after dropping by a friend.  He has a conspicuous house door made from a pumpkin; both his little ivory-skinned son and his big chocolate dog shine like fairy-tale creatures.

Upon arrival I caught sight of something at the side door: it was an orange plastic container with a white envelop.  I opened it and saw a handwritten card:

Helen,

We hope you feel better soon!

I suddenly recalled that two friends of mine—an academic couple—sent me a message last night: they were cooking a butternut squash soup and would drop it off with me this morning. “We don’t know if that would appeal to you, but it might be easy to eat with a toothache.”

In fact, I am a big fan of soup, a huge fan of butternut squash, and a gigantic fan of butternut squash soup.  Especially because I can hardly chew these days, a butternut squash soup is ideal. 

I unlocked the door and took the container right into the kitchen; it was much heavier than it looked.  Albeit left outside in the cold for a whole day, the soup still felt warm.  I placed it in the microwave and pressed “Start;” the color of orange radiated.  Meanwhile, I picked out a large silver spoon of floral pattern I had never got a chance to use before.  “Now at last I’ve got to use you.  Only you can match the soup!”

A few minutes later, I began to enjoy my extraordinary supper with the extraordinary spoon at my extraordinarily high dining table.  I felt myself transformed into one of the seven dwarfs in Snow White. 

The soup was phenomenal.  Whole Foods is lucky that the couple of my friends decided to become scholars several years ago; had they chosen to open a family restaurant, nobody would now come to Whole Foods for soup.

But the taste was not that which impressed me most. 

Since I came to this city in August, I usually skip dinner.  It’s no fun eating alone; quite the contrary, eating alone often spoils the mood.  Hence the Tang poet Li Bai (701-762) invited the moon and his own shadow in the moonlight to join him for wine.

Tonight for the first time I had supper alone yet did not feel alone.  By cooking the soup themselves and delivering it to my house like a Christmas gift the couple of my friends were sitting here with me.  

I don’t know whether Li Bai had a couple of friends who would cook a butternut squash soup for him as well if he had a root canal.  I only know that the fairy tales that happened to me this winter all taste like hot pumpkin soup.

And orange is the color of fairy tales.