The next four lines of my eulogy for Asher read as follows:
Asher persuaded us to enlarge the studio apartment by cutting an unused room in two - if you haven't seen our house, you won't be able to imagine this very easily. Although the studio apartment gave him privacy and comfort, he didn't like being dependent on us. If he had stayed in art school for another three years, he would have been in his late twenties and still living at home, not on his own, not supporting himself. So a strong motivation behind his decision to move from Visual Communications to Haute Cuisine was to take care of himself, to step away from dependency on his parents.
Within a week of his arrival in New York, he had found an apartment and a job, and from then on he made his own living in New York, took care of himself, lived like a grown up - as a young man in his twenties should. I'm sure he was very pleased with the knowledge that he could take care of himself, that he relished his own self-confidence.
As a parent, nothing has pleased me more than seeing my children grow up and take charge of their own lives: seeing our married daughter become a loving, responsible mother, seeing Asher's older brother complete law school and take on a serious job in a big firm, seeing Asher move forward in his chosen career path, and seeing his younger sister thrive in her university studies (also enjoying her presence in our home for the time being). If a parent has enabled his or her children to become self-sufficient adults, that parent can be called successful.
At first Asher thought he would aim toward becoming a gourmet chef, but after about a year of studying and working in high end restaurants, he took a job managing the kitchen of a tapas bar in the Lower East Side, making good food, but not for wealthy people who think nothing of paying a few hundred dollars for a meal. Later he studied restaurant management and considered opening a restaurant of his own, but after examining the financial risks he decided against it. Rents were too high in the area where he wanted to open the restaurant. Meanwhile he was working in a very successful Malaysian restaurant on Manhattan. Finally, however, he decided to use his skills to benefit people rather than to make as much money as he could, and he was planning to volunteer for a project run by his teacher in the restaurant management course, teaching restaurant skills to street kids in Vietnam.
Asher had a firm belief in the value of good nutrition, in avoiding factory-processed foods, in fostering local foods and genetic variation. One of his reasons for going to Peru was to visit the home of maize and potatoes, where a lot of the original genetic variety was still preserved. I can imagine that if he had lived, he would have become involved in nutritional education, in spreading the value he found in cooking, serving, and eating real food. He also had a strong commitment to hospitality, not in the cynical, commercial sense of serving customers and getting money out of them, but in the true, deep sense of making people feel welcome and comfortable.
The following line in the eulogy reads: I expected good surprises from Asher.
I was hoping he would put together his skills in design, management, cooking, and human relations into something wonderful and astonishing. He certainly would have done so, had he lived.
- Asher matured profoundly during his three years in New York.
- This makes his death even more painful for me.
- He was at a turning point in his life.
- He had clarified his values and priorities for himself.
Asher persuaded us to enlarge the studio apartment by cutting an unused room in two - if you haven't seen our house, you won't be able to imagine this very easily. Although the studio apartment gave him privacy and comfort, he didn't like being dependent on us. If he had stayed in art school for another three years, he would have been in his late twenties and still living at home, not on his own, not supporting himself. So a strong motivation behind his decision to move from Visual Communications to Haute Cuisine was to take care of himself, to step away from dependency on his parents.
Within a week of his arrival in New York, he had found an apartment and a job, and from then on he made his own living in New York, took care of himself, lived like a grown up - as a young man in his twenties should. I'm sure he was very pleased with the knowledge that he could take care of himself, that he relished his own self-confidence.
As a parent, nothing has pleased me more than seeing my children grow up and take charge of their own lives: seeing our married daughter become a loving, responsible mother, seeing Asher's older brother complete law school and take on a serious job in a big firm, seeing Asher move forward in his chosen career path, and seeing his younger sister thrive in her university studies (also enjoying her presence in our home for the time being). If a parent has enabled his or her children to become self-sufficient adults, that parent can be called successful.
At first Asher thought he would aim toward becoming a gourmet chef, but after about a year of studying and working in high end restaurants, he took a job managing the kitchen of a tapas bar in the Lower East Side, making good food, but not for wealthy people who think nothing of paying a few hundred dollars for a meal. Later he studied restaurant management and considered opening a restaurant of his own, but after examining the financial risks he decided against it. Rents were too high in the area where he wanted to open the restaurant. Meanwhile he was working in a very successful Malaysian restaurant on Manhattan. Finally, however, he decided to use his skills to benefit people rather than to make as much money as he could, and he was planning to volunteer for a project run by his teacher in the restaurant management course, teaching restaurant skills to street kids in Vietnam.
Asher had a firm belief in the value of good nutrition, in avoiding factory-processed foods, in fostering local foods and genetic variation. One of his reasons for going to Peru was to visit the home of maize and potatoes, where a lot of the original genetic variety was still preserved. I can imagine that if he had lived, he would have become involved in nutritional education, in spreading the value he found in cooking, serving, and eating real food. He also had a strong commitment to hospitality, not in the cynical, commercial sense of serving customers and getting money out of them, but in the true, deep sense of making people feel welcome and comfortable.
The following line in the eulogy reads: I expected good surprises from Asher.
I was hoping he would put together his skills in design, management, cooking, and human relations into something wonderful and astonishing. He certainly would have done so, had he lived.
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