Third Peanut

“Ding!”

As soon as the elevator to the first floor opens, I know that someone else besides the man at the front desk is present in the lobby of our apartment building. I can hear the laughter and bubbly animation of a woman speaking, her flow of words rarely interrupted by the “hmmm” and “yeahs” of Deskman. Never one to start a conversation, he is a perpetual “yes man” to anyone willing to strike the match of ephemeral connection. His eyes are all-seeing. I have noticed the television monitors in front of his chair and often wonder if he watches us while we descend from the 13th floor to the 1st. I surely would. This morning, his attention is lassoed by another tenant of our building, and the conversational energy level from afar reads high for 8am in the morning.

As we round the corner, my eyes squint, a reflex reaction to the sunlight bouncing off the smooth floor that lays the foundation to all apartment buildings in Taiwan. My vision quickly adjusts as my wife, my daughter, and I pass the actual flower display and near the front desk, where the oratorial flower display is in full blossom. The woman standing and talking to Deskman gesticulates her hands in the air, emphasizing a point she was making as we rounded the corner. One of her hands is balled into a fist, indicating that she is holding something. She turns her head to the left, her frizzy black hair swishing to the right.

“Take one, their steamed,” she says, lifting her tiny catcher’s mitt fist in my direction. I take a step back, unsure of what it is that she is attempting to hand to me, her face crinkling up into a smile that glares with the light of the Sun.

“Peanuts!”

It’s a warm, early morning in the outskirts of the southern Taiwanese city of Tainan. The air has the quiet solitude that comes as the soft light of day awakens its surroundings.

Breakfast time.

I await the rest of the school group to arrive so that I can hand out the local rice ball specialties, along with milk tea for our band of travelers.

The group consists of around 20 upper middle school students from a school in London, along with three of their teachers. They’ve traveled here as part of a 10 day program so as to apply elements of Chinese language and culture during their travels, reinforcing what they’ve learned at school. I’ve coordinated with the lead teacher, as well as the travel agency and my fellow facilitator, a local from Tainan, fellow improviser, and longtime friend, so that we can integrate this lovely city into their experiential learning program. It has always been a dream of mine to bring a group to the lesser known city of Tainan and explore its historic, cultural, and culinary relevance and value. I also wanted to give my friend a chance to represent her city.

One of the most exciting, and potentially, risky parts of visiting Tainan is the accommodation, and on the previous night we slept in the massive Lu Er Men Temple 正統鹿耳門母廟, the world’s largest Mazu馬祖 Temple. The temple has very modest sleeping arrangements, normally visited by travelers who come to pray to the Goddess Mazu on their pilgrimage, rather than accommodating a group such as the one I am leading. It makes up in ambience, cultural importance, and grandeur what it loses in comfort. I can only hope that the unique quality of the temple keeps the students from continuously comparing it to their much more plush bedsheets, bathrooms, and breakfasts in Taipei.

All the breakfasts arrive to the temple, except for one final student. As someone who has worked with experiential learning programs for years with a China-based company called The Hutong, I am accustomed to the various dietary restrictions and allergies that each group includes. Almost inevitably there are a number of participants with lengthy lists of restrictions to take into account, and this trip is no exception. On the previous day at a DIY pineapple cake experience, the day’s events were delayed for around 40 minutes when one of the students experienced dizziness and slight breathing difficulties with what he associated to his egg allergy. Moving on without further incident, we continued to stay vigilant, as this particular student also traveled with an epipen for his severe peanut allergy. Keeping the previous day’s incident in mind, I sent my colleague to pick up something from the nearby convenience store that would be specifically for this student.

The other students’ sandwiches contained eggs, and my colleague returned holding a pre-packaged sandwich with a chocolate spread inside, as well as some fruit. After receiving the sandwich, the student opened it up and began to munch along with his classmates in the light of the morning Sun.

The morning seemed to be getting off to a good start, and I chatted with my colleague about post-breakfast temple exploration. We’re interrupted when the lead teacher walks up to both of us, the sandwich wrapper still in his hand. He takes us aside and points to the ingredients within the sandwich. There, in fine print Chinese characters at the bottom, we see the words that slam the door on the rest of the day.

“Contains peanuts!”

My chopsticks delicately pick up a single edamame from the plate on the dish where I have a small collection of the healthy vegetables de-skinned and ready to eat. My wife sits across from me, and my daughter sits to my right. I have Spotify playing Charles Mingus to bring an atmosphere of ruckus and Saturday evening vibes to the table. We’ve just heard an advertisement, so we have at least a half hour until our tunes are interrupted by another one.

The dinner is colorful and relatively healthy. There are sliced yellow and red bell peppers with a light mayo dip, edamame, seasoned pork with onions and ginger, halved cherry tomatoes, edamame and rice. My wife, who is a native of Niigata prefecture 新寫, insists on purchasing Japanese rice, as her hometown is famed for it and perhaps the best sake in Japan. My choice of poison for the evening is a simple whiskey on the rocks, the clink of the ice cubes bumping their way rhythmically along with Mingus’ “Better Get it Into Your Soul.”

I lift my chopsticks holding the single edamame in a delicate balance and shift my arm steadily towards the right where my daughter is sitting. I indicate to lift her fork into the air to take the edamame from my chopsticks, like passing a baton in a slow, dinner-ready race. Just as I’m about to release my chopsticks and let gravity do it’s thing to relocate the edamame onto the fork, my wife clears her throat, and I glance over at her.

She shakes her head, indicating that this move is a no-no.

“In Japan, this is bad manners.”

“I’m your neighbor, don’t worry. They’re still fresh.” She holds out her balled up hand, the steaming peanuts tightly gripped. My wife and daughter wait in the sunshine streaming through the door.

My mind wrestles amidst culture, health, and getting out the door.

In Japan, this is bad manners.

My neighbor’s hand turns into a pair of chopsticks. I am an infant holding up an infant’s fork waiting for gravity to drop.

My colleague and the lead teacher take the affected student to the hospital by ambulance. Although it’s a scare, he’s given treatment and makes it through the ordeal without any major averse affects to his health. My colleague and the lead teacher experience as much anxiety as anyone during the hospital visit. Meanwhile, I am separated from their experience, and remain relatively calm and focused throughout, as I take the rest of the group to visit sites in Tainan, all the while making consistent check-ins with my colleague as the three of them travel separately back to Taipei on the bullet train.

While the Tainan dream doesn’t materialize the way I expect, this incident is another one of life’s unpredictable moments that gives me pause to hold onto the present. Reality always twists a knife in our side without warning. We crack the peanut shell expecting only to see two inside, but to our surprise we find three peanuts residing in the confined space. It happens more often than we can predict.

Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. Viktor E. Frankl

No one knows the multitudes of accumulated experience and connection that may pop up, surprise us, and run through our brains like electric current at the moment of decision. When my neighbor offered me the fistful of peanuts, I was instantly taken back to the edamame-inspired lesson in Japanese etiquette from my wife, as well as being simultaneously transported to that fateful morning in Tainan. Everything layers upon itself in one moment, like a delicious mille crepe cake resting in front of us on life’s ever-changing buffet. In that particular moment when we make a decision that may appear as inconsequential and benign, we may also be adding another layer to the cake, impaling an extra edamame on the fork, or discovering a 3rd peanut in the shell.

It happens more more often than we can predict.