“He soothed places I hadn’t known needed soothing, seemed perfectly willing to embrace the parts of me that were wanton, unsettled, unfinished, and contradictory.”

Focusing on the deep and wordless connection that grows between Tembi and Saro during their earliest romance, this quote highlights the many ways in which Saro attends to needs that even Tembi does not realize that she possesses, conveying both a sensually physical longing and the profoundly empathic bond that they share even in the very beginnings of their intense, lifelong relationship. Their love is the central theme of Tembi’s memoir, alongside the loss and grief that she must overcome upon his death.

“Cooking is about surrender.”

With this observation, it becomes clear that the very act of cooking food symbolizes love throughout Tembi’s memoir. As a child of divorced parents, Tembi’s early college days are marked by a deeply ingrained distrust of the very concept of unconditional love, and Saro’s elaborate courtship-by-cooking is truly his “love language,” his desire to show her without words that by surrendering so much of his time and energy into delighting her senses and her soul, he surrenders his heart to her as well. Ultimately, Tembi chooses to surrender her own fears and accept Saro’s love over her misgivings and the objections of his family.