My Dad’s Fried Chicken Wings Algorithm Has Kept Us Connected This Year
Ever since COVID-19 landed, it’s become impossible for me to fly across the country to visit my mom and dad. On the one hand, my mom is always easy to connect with via regular text messages and calls. On the other, ever since my dad had a stroke he’s never been the same. We’re totally out of touch.

And because writing doesn’t come naturally to him — he left home when he was 13 to work and is functionally illiterate — it’s even harder to make a remote connection to him.

My father in the moment of preparing a plate of chicken for me. He didn’t say much because his craft is what spoke for him instead.

The way my father traditionally communicated with others around him was through his body. He spent his entire life as a physical laborer, and never spoke much. Every day he would work like a machine for our family:

wake up between 1am and 3am start making tofu so that it would cool for transport by 8am work throughout the day, moving intricate or very heavy items from one place to another get home around 6pm repeat

There were only slight variations in the day depending upon the weather, the temperature of tap water, and the kind of soybeans that he had sourced. You could say that his personality resembled the machine-like process in which he played a key part.

The job he left home for at 13 was to shine shoes on a merchant boat. Over time he rose to become a cook on that same ship. Hundreds of people needed to be fed, and thus his machine-like nature likely evolved from the many meals he produced from an early age. As I got older, I noticed that the only way my dad could show any visible evidence of love was through what he cooked for others. And if there was one thing that everyone loved about my dad, it was his fried chicken wings.

My dad before his stroke. Unfortunately he can no longer cook

Since his stroke, dad has no longer been able to cook for himself, and so the communicative power of his physical labors are now gone. When I consider what a stroke can do to a person who is physically centered versus what a disease like Alzheimer’s can do to a mentally centered person, there are times when I perversely wished Alzheimer’s had afflicted my dad instead. Without the confident use of his body, it’s like he’s completely vanished. And with that, his ability to express his love. Yet these days I think that one of his algorithms still exists.

Since his stroke, dad has no longer been able to cook for himself, and so the communicative power of his physical labors are now gone.

A recipe is an algorithm. When created by a human that we care about, it has the ability to last well beyond its creator. Tasting the outcome can be what activates your connection to the originator. Or, the act of cooking the recipe can spark a connection by triggering memories of when you were first taught it. I’m well aware that people who code can strike a similar emotional connection to numerical recipes and such, but I personally believe that fried chicken wings easily trump anything nerdly.
['John Maeda']
['Computational Thinking', 'Chicken Recipes', 'Design']