A savory chicken soup with red dates and goji berries for when you’re under the weather. Sticky rice wrapped in banana leaves and tied up like a package with string.

Whether it was crisp-fried turnip cakes, lasagna, handmade pork sausages, banana cake or mochi, food is my mother’s constant medium for expressing love. Every time we visit her in California, she insists on sending me back to Honolulu with dim sum.

As long as I’ve known her, the kitchen has been her domain. She was always there, chopping, simmering and baking something good. She always made it seem effortless.

My mom, Shiow Jing Wu (Amy for short), crossed the ocean from the island of Taiwan to the mainland United States in 1969 to join my dad, who was getting his Ph.D. at Colorado State University. She overcame cultural and language barriers to work as an accountant while raising me and my brother. She adapted readily to new places each time we moved across state lines, eventually to California, for my dad’s job as an engineer. Thanks to her, I can converse in Taiwanese.

When I look down, I have the same hands as Mom’s. Except hers could fly across a calculator, whip up a meal in minutes, mend and sew, knit and crochet beautiful things and coax fruits and flowers out of the garden. There was a time when I wanted to blaze my own path in life. Now as a mom myself, I can only hope to be more like her.

Mom is now 74, a grandmother of four and a cancer survivor. She taught me about hard work and perseverance, and to have courage in the face of adversity. She never gives up, never stops caring — and she’s still busy cooking.