grains of rice

Old superstitions are one of my favourite things about old things.

Growing up, my dad used to encourage us to eat all our rice by telling us that whatever grains of rice we leave on our plate will equate to the number of zits our future partners will have.

This was definitely a superstition created to avoid waste. Eat all your food, we can't be wasting any grains of rice. Wasting is very un-Asian, especially when your family once had very little. 

But it's one of those superstitions I kind of love. I think it's pretty funny actually, and because I'm absolutely obsessed with rice, I always eat all my grains. 

As a kid, my rice was often the first thing to get eaten. Now, it's the protein that goes first because that's the more expensive part of the dish. But it's very important to me that all my rice is gone by the end of the day. (I eat things in a kind of...segmented way. I tend to eat in parts, I guess. If I have rice, veggies, and protein on my plate, they each get eaten one at a time. Not always, but pretty frequently.)

I can almost imagine my grandma (my maa maa) scolding my dad for not eating all his rice in the same way that he would (jokingly) scold us. I can almost imagine my maa maa talking to my dad about the things we can and cannot do before the Lunar New Year. 

I wish we would've had more time with my dad's parents. And the same can be said with my mom's parents too. But life isn't always fair sometimes. But at the end of the day, they live on in our superstitions and in our beliefs. They live on because of what they taught us. 

And they taught us to eat all our rice. Waste not, want not. 

we were on the couch.

i was explaining to you

an old belief

of how you must eat every

grain of rice

or else the grains you leave

will equate to acne on your partner’s face.

you laughed. you said,
“well you better eat all your rice

because i’m your boyfriend!”

no one had ever called themselves that

for me.

(i still eat all my grains of rice for you).

i love you more - son of cloud