The Dumplings We Make Together

Every Sunday morning, Mei woke up to the same wonderful sound — tap, tap, tap — Grandpa's knife chopping vegetables on the big wooden cutting board in the kitchen.

That meant only one thing.

Dumpling day.

Mei jumped out of bed, pulled on her fuzzy slippers, and shuffled down the hall. There was Grandpa, standing at the counter in his blue apron with the little flour handprints on it — flour handprints that Mei had put there when she was four, and five, and six, and he had never once washed them off.

"Ah, there she is," Grandpa said, without even turning around. "My assistant."

"How did you know it was me?" Mei asked.

"Nobody else in this house goes shuffle-shuffle-shuffle like a penguin," Grandpa said.

Mei giggled and climbed onto her step stool.

The counter was already set up like a dumpling workshop. There was the big silver bowl of filling — pork and cabbage and ginger and tiny chopped shrimp, all mixed together until it smelled so good Mei wanted to eat it with a spoon. There was the little dish of water. And there, stacked in a perfect tower, were the dumpling wrappers — thin and round and white as moons.

Grandpa had been making dumplings for fifty years. Fifty! That was longer than Mei's mom had been alive. That was longer than their house had been built. That was longer than the old maple tree in the backyard, which Grandpa said he had planted when he first came to this country.

Fifty years of dumplings.

"Ready?" Grandpa asked. He placed a wrapper flat on his palm. With his other hand, he scooped exactly the right amount of filling with a spoon and set it right in the center. Then — and this was the part Mei watched most carefully — he dipped his finger in water, traced it along the edge of the wrapper in one smooth circle, and folded.

His fingers moved so fast. Pinch, pinch, pinch, pinch, pinch. Five tiny pleats along the top, each one the same size, each one leaning the same way, like a little fan.

He set the dumpling down on the tray.

It was perfect. It looked like a crescent moon wearing a tiny crown. It sat up straight and proud, like it knew how beautiful it was.

"Okay," said Mei. "My turn."

She picked up a wrapper. She scooped the filling. A little bit fell off the spoon and plopped onto the counter. She scooped a tiny bit more. She dipped her finger in the water and traced the edge — wait, she missed a spot — okay, she got it now.

Then she folded.

Pinch... pinch... pinch.

She set her dumpling down on the tray next to Grandpa's.

It did not sit up straight. It flopped over on its side like a sleepy dog. The pleats went in different directions. A tiny bit of filling was poking out of one corner, like the dumpling was sticking its tongue out.

Mei frowned.

"It's wrong," she said.

Grandpa glanced over. "It's a dumpling," he said. "Let's keep going."

So they kept going. Grandpa made another, and another, and another. Each one was perfect. Each one sat in its neat little row like a soldier.

Mei made another. This one was too fat. She had put in too much filling, and when she tried to fold it, the wrapper wouldn't close all the way, and she had to squeeze it shut with both hands. It looked like a lumpy pillow.

She made another. This one was too flat. She'd been so worried about too much filling that she barely put any in at all. When she folded it, it was thin and floppy like a sad little hat.

She made another. The wrapper tore.

"Grandpa," Mei said, and her voice had that wobbly sound it got when she was frustrated. "Yours are all beautiful. Mine look like... like..."

"Like what?" Grandpa asked.

"Like they got sat on by a bear."

Grandpa laughed — not a mean laugh, the warm kind that came up from his belly. He set down his spoon and turned to face her, leaning against the counter.

"Mei-Mei," he said. "Do you want to know what my dumplings looked like when I first started making them with my grandpa?"

Mei nodded.

"Worse than yours."

"No way."

"Oh, much worse. My first dumpling fell completely apart in the pot. Just — poof — gone. Filling floating everywhere. My grandpa had to fish out the wrapper with chopsticks. It looked like a wet napkin."

Mei covered her mouth and laughed.

"My second dumpling," Grandpa continued, holding up two fingers, "I sealed so tight that when we bit into it, the filling was completely squished into one tiny corner. The rest was just empty dough. Like biting into a little bread balloon."

Mei was really laughing now.

"And my third dumpling—" Grandpa leaned in close and whispered, as if sharing a great secret, "—I dropped on the floor. And the dog ate it before anyone could stop him."

"You didn't have a dog!" Mei said.

"We did then. A very fat one. Guess why he was so fat."

"Because of your dumplings!"

"Because of my dumplings."

Mei looked down at her lumpy, lopsided, tongue-sticking-out dumplings on the tray. She looked at them a little differently now.

"Okay," she said. "Let's keep going."

They kept going. Side by side, Grandpa's big hands and Mei's small ones, working through the stack of wrappers. Grandpa hummed an old song that Mei didn't know the words to but knew the melody by heart, because he hummed it every single dumpling day.

Mei's seventh dumpling was better. The pleats weren't even, but they all went the same direction.

Her tenth dumpling was better still. It almost sat up on its own — it leaned a little, like it was just tired.

Her fourteenth dumpling had five pleats. Five! She counted them twice.

"Grandpa, look!" she said, holding it up.

Grandpa adjusted his glasses and peered at it. He nodded slowly, seriously, the way he did when something was truly worthy of a nod.

"That," he said, "is a dumpling."

Mei beamed.

When all the wrappers were used up, they stood back and looked at the tray together. On one side, Grandpa's rows of perfect crescents. On the other side, Mei's collection — fat ones, flat ones, the torn one she had patched back together, and right at the end, her proud little row of almost-right ones.

Grandpa carried the tray to the stove, and Mei watched as he lowered the dumplings into the big pot of boiling water, all of them together. They swirled and tumbled and danced around each other — Grandpa's and Mei's, all mixed up, until you couldn't tell whose was whose anymore.

When they were done, Grandpa scooped them into two big bowls. They sat at the kitchen table by the window, where the morning sun came in and made the steam glow golden. Mei poured soy sauce into her little dipping dish and added exactly three drops of chili oil, the way Grandpa had taught her.

She picked up a dumpling with her chopsticks. She didn't know if it was one of hers or one of Grandpa's.

She bit into it.

Hot, savory, a little bit of ginger, a little bit of sweet shrimp.

Delicious.

She picked up another one. This one was definitely hers — she could tell because it was shaped like a small potato. She dipped it and ate it.

Also delicious.

Exactly the same amount of delicious.

"Grandpa," Mei said, her mouth still a tiny bit full, "next Sunday, I'm going to make them even better."

"I know you will," said Grandpa.

"And the Sunday after that, even better."

"Yes."

"And when I'm old like you—"

"Watch it."

"—when I've been making them for fifty years, mine will look just like yours."

Grandpa reached across the table and wiped a little smudge of chili oil from her cheek with his thumb.

"Maybe even better," he said.

And then they finished every last dumpling in their bowls, together, in the golden Sunday morning light.