Grilled Fish Tacos

February. Sixteen years since Reynaldo died. I am thirty-four and I am older than he was when the diabetes started taking him apart. The math hits me at the grocery store on Tuesday and I have to sit in the car for ten minutes before I can drive home. I called Lourdes from the parking lot. She said, "Anak, eat something." I ate string cheese in the car. I drove home.

I scheduled my own physical for Friday. Everything normal — kidneys clean, blood sugar fine, blood pressure good. The relief was physical. I called Lourdes and told her. She said, "Of course. You are careful." I am not careful. I am lucky. There is a difference.

I wrote a blog post that night called "Loving Your Family Means Getting Your Bloodwork Done." The post is not poetic. The post is a list of preventive screenings every Filipino-American should be doing in their thirties. Diabetes runs through us like a river. Kidney disease is downstream. The post is the most useful thing I have ever written. It got eight hundred comments — Filipino nurses, Filipino-American children of dead fathers, Filipino-American children of fathers still living who they are now scheduling appointments for. The post became, accidentally, an intervention.

I made his salmon sinigang on Sunday. I added the extra squeeze of tamarind. I ate it alone at the kitchen table.

Termination dust on the Chugach. The body still in winter mode.

Pete texted me Saturday. We talked on the phone for twenty minutes. He listened. I talked. He laughed at the right places. He asked the right questions.

A reader from Honolulu wrote me a long email about the post. The email was beautiful. I wrote her back.

I read for an hour Sunday night. The reading was the small surrender. The surrender was the rest.

I made a list Sunday morning of the small things I needed to do this week. The list was twenty-three items. I crossed off twelve by Wednesday. I crossed off four more by Friday. The remaining seven moved to next week's list. The moving is the practice.

The blog post for the week was a short reflection on the recipe of choice. Six hundred words. I drafted Tuesday. I revised Thursday. I posted Friday morning. The cadence has been the cadence for two decades. The cadence is the discipline. The discipline is the reason the work survives the years.

The grocery store had calamansi this week. I bought four pounds. I made calamansi vinaigrette and froze it in cubes. The cubes will get me through the next three months. The freezing is the small inheritance from Lourdes — every Filipina mother freezes things in cubes.

A young woman wrote in this week — a nursing student in Houston — to ask how I had handled the early years of bedside work. I wrote her back at length. The writing back is the work. The work is the inheritance moving forward.

Lourdes called Tuesday. She was upset about something at the church. I listened. I made the right sounds at the right intervals. I did not try to fix it. The not-fixing was the love.

I called Angela on Saturday. We talked about the week. We laughed at the things we always laugh at. We did not say what was actually weighing — both of us were carrying things and both of us were saving them for in-person. The phone is good for the surface. The kitchen is for the depth.

The book I am reading this month is a memoir by a Vietnamese-American chef. The book is good. The book is also, in some ways, my own life adjacent. The adjacent is the thing that keeps me reading.

I made his salmon sinigang on Sunday, but the recipe I keep coming back to when I need fish to feel like a forward motion — not a memorial, but a continuation — is this one: grilled fish tacos, bright and simple, the kind of thing Reynaldo might have made on a Tuesday if he’d had more Tuesdays. The tamarind is behind me for the week; now I want char and lime and something that feels like I am still here, still eating, still choosing. Grilling fish is its own small act of care. After the parking lot, after the bloodwork, after the crossing off of lists, I needed a recipe that tasted like intention.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 10 min | Total Time: 25 min | Servings: 4

Ingredients

1 1/2 lbs white fish fillets (tilapia, cod, or mahi-mahi), cut into strips
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
8 small corn or flour tortillas
2 cups shredded green cabbage
1/2 cup sour cream or plain Greek yogurt
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
1/4 cup fresh cilantro, chopped
1 avocado, sliced
Lime wedges, for serving
Hot sauce, optional

Instructions

Marinate the fish. In a small bowl, combine olive oil, chili powder, cumin, garlic powder, smoked paprika, salt, and pepper. Rub the spice mixture evenly over the fish strips. Let rest for 10 minutes at room temperature.
Make the crema. Stir together the sour cream (or Greek yogurt) and lime juice in a small bowl. Set aside.
Preheat the grill. Heat a grill or grill pan over medium-high heat. Lightly oil the grates.
Grill the fish. Grill the fish strips for 3–4 minutes per side, until the flesh is opaque and flakes easily with a fork. Remove from heat and break gently into pieces.
Warm the tortillas. Place tortillas directly on the grill for 30 seconds per side until lightly charred and pliable.
Assemble the tacos. Layer each tortilla with shredded cabbage, grilled fish, sliced avocado, a drizzle of lime crema, and fresh cilantro. Add hot sauce if desired.
Serve immediately. Squeeze fresh lime over assembled tacos and serve at once.

Nutrition (per serving)

Grilled Fish Tacos — The Week I Made His Recipe and Scheduled My Own Future