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It’s fitting that a stew of oxtail signaled the end of days as we knew it, that bullish attitude of “Life, we got you.”

O new normal, we thought we knew you so well, so briefly.

This Tuesday, April 7, Singapore begins a very valiant attempt to break the Covid-19 circuit. We’re going to need the same gumption, smarts and appetite that drew the Asian tiger out of Southeast Asian backwaters.

Like our government’s measured action plans over the last two months, my mother’s cooking requires several days to prep and assemble, the occasional tease of hearty stock simmering or a slab of pork flashing belly leaking onto WhatsApp chats. Family members would speculate on the final dish, asking the same question they would of the Coronavirus: “Will I get it?”

On the evening before Singapore’s last day to get our shit together before most of us should stay home unless absolutely essential to run out for food and emergencies, or, just a run, we gathered around Mom’s oxtail stew. Similar to how our country has, for almost two decades, prepared for a pandemic as we now face, Mom’s oxtail stew has been, well, stewing in her cooking canon since the 1980s. Its aroma imbued the kitchen of our Bedok Reservoir Road HDB flat. Eater, that punchy fragrance now envelopes the first floor of our Katong terraced abode. We grew up with this dish - its appearance was always a weekend treat. Today, we ladled it with just as much excitement as we hunkered down for 30 days of a life less ordinary.

Everything about tonight’s dinner is telling of the times. I set out to buy a loaf of something hearty from Firebake, one of my favorite neighorhood bakeries, but the gluten-tolerant panic buyers got there before me. All the bread was gone, so I brown-bagged two potato burger buns instead (not at all any step down). Life course altered by the appetite of fate? Simply think a-round the problem. These buns are as irrepressible as RuPaul ruling the runway, and a light toast brought out their buoyant best - RuPaul strutting the Met steps. We quickly piled these vessels up with hunks of beef, carrot and potato as gravy glazed fingertips. When bone, marrow or gristle was encountered - why, we just grawed on the best of them and spat out the chaff. When all was supped and dined, those buns mopped up the serious business of eating.

Wherever the virus may rage, it could not, can not come between two beautiful things from two treasured kitchens.