Frying an egg sounds simple enough. It’s a staple for any restaurant that does breakfast. I know I’m gonna order it when I’m at a diner, but it always felt a little strange to me.

I put a layer of oil into a small frying pan, just as my mother told me to do when I first learned to fry an egg. One egg at a time, she said, that way I don’t break the yolk when I transfer from the pan to a plate — mostly because I rush it. Better to be safe.

It becomes second nature to me when I make Filipino breakfast meals, usually a silog — a protein, fried eggs, and rice, preferably garlic rice. I’ve made fried eggs countless times before, but this time I stop and think about it.

I didn’t put enough oil to coat the pan with a layer. Enough oil, my mother says, so that I can flick the hot oil over the top of the egg with a spatula so there is a layer of egg white film over the yolk. I do my best without it.

I never stopped to think whether or not this was how Americans made their fried eggs. I never cared to look it up. I already knew my mother’s way of making it, which I assume is also my grandmother’s way of making it. Passed down through the years, through the different hands of colonization.

When did our family learn to fry eggs, anyhow? Was it always part of Filipino meals, or did it come over in the war just like SPAM or spaghetti did?

I decide to fry half a dozen eggs, what’s left in the container. I try to make the edges crispy, because those always taste good in silogs.

I break a yolk when I’m on my second egg. “Fuck,” I yell out. The only ones who can hear me are my cats.

The yolk’s integral to the way I know how to eat eggs — the most comforting way for me. You put the fried eggs, at least two, over rice and you mix it all together until the egg whites are broken up and evenly distributed through and the yolk coats all of it. Add in patis for flavor.

I think again about how Americans made their fried eggs, but this time I think back to how I was bullied in kindergarten for being Asian. For not doing things in a typical American way. How I still think about whether or not I’m doing things wrong because it’s not the American way.

How I eat my fried eggs aren’t the American way. The way that always feels weird to me in a diner, when I have to scoop my eggs with slices of toast so that I have a starch with it. I sprinkle salt on it, because there’s no patis at diners.

I finish frying these eggs. I put three over rice in a bowl, upset that I don’t have enough yolk to coat the rice because I broke it while cooking, and now upset that I’m thinking about the origin of my family’s meals once again.