I love you like I love rice
An open letter to my little ones
It’s 8.20 at night. I’m on my second bowl of rice and tadka dahl mindlessly watching Netflix. My carb-heavy meal is soothing amid the noise. An absolute cacophony of laughter, very loud clapping and screaming - from you kids and your dad makes me want to run away from here into some, any, silence.
Inside, I feel jealously unravelling her talons. We have our bedtime thank you game and Sunday snuggles, where we all sit on the same chair. And I’m proud of being the official nail-cutter. But there’s hardly any silliness. Or, much laughter. Not as many photos of us together either.
With me, there’s “Please, just please, finish your food before you go off running.”
There’s, “Well, if you didn’t empty the shampoo bottle on the floor and I didn’t, maybe the giraffe did.”
And, “I’m sorry, but you really need to sleep in your own bed.”
You know what this tension between love and need, between being the rule enforcer or the party clown reminds me of?
Rice.
I’ve been in a co-dependent, always loving, sometimes frustrating relationship with rice all my life.
Because you’re growing up in New Zealand, maybe rice doesn’t have the same meaning. But me? I don’t think I’ve gone more than a week in my life without eating rice.
The way I haven’t gone more than a week without you guys around.
I eat rice for dinner with my dahl or curry. For lunch, I’ll use up leftover rice in a pulao or rice salad situation. Sometimes I’ll indulge in a rice kheer for dessert. And, whenever I invite someone home, I’ll pull out the stops and make a nice biryani.
I don’t feel like I’ve eaten a meal unless I have at least a small heap of rice (ideally doused in ghee). It’s the way most Indian food is meant to be.
The way I countdown till you’re asleep, so I have some quiet but then spend all that quiet time drinking in your tiny but heavy feet resting on Mummy’s squishy tummy.
It makes me angry, though, that we don’t celebrate rice
Like the food I cook for you, the baths I give, or the energy it takes to listen to you say “mummy” 478 times a day.
We take rice for granted because it’s just there. Cooked and ready to be eaten in the fridge, a spare pack in the garage if we run out. A staple. Always on the grocery list.
When I get home from work, I put the rice for cooking in the Thermomix on autopilot. And, while I do expect praise for the Dhansak I made for you on Sunday, I’d roll my eyes if you said, “Wow, what amazing rice you’ve cooked”.
It’s not noteworthy. Like me. Sitting silently in the dark on the floor, between both your beds, arms stretched holding two tiny hands while I wonder how many audio stories it will take before you’re asleep.
The only time I’m reminded how much I love rice is when I go without
Mumma’s fish curry tastes nice with a kachubar (tangy onion salad), but it doesn’t give me the post-curry all-is-right-with-the-world feeling without rice.
Cauliflower rice is a decent enough base for my dahl that fills me up. But it’s too vile to eat daily (don’t tell your keto, paleo friends).
The same way that no praise from a reader, an editor or my boss fills my heart quite like when you run speedily out the door shouting “my sweetheart” when I come home from work.
Also, nothing brings together boring leftovers that don’t work with one another, like a frying pan of fried rice or pulao. In the same way, no one can kiss your invisible scars away as I can.
Rice has been with me through every season of life
When I began eating solids, I started with rice and dahl arancini-esque balls.
The first thing I learned to cook was rice.
When I sought comfort from being bullied, I drowned my tears in a bowl of rice.
And when I was breastfeeding you I ate my weight in rice because I was so hungry.
I’ve flirted with red rice. Tried black rice on for size. Brown rice, Arborio, Jasmine. Doesn’t matter what colour or how rice is cooked, I love them all.
Rice is the foundation of every nice thing I’ve eaten in my life. The way I’ll be yours.
I might be the boring parent. But my aspiration is to be your bowl of rice. The stage on which you shine. The thing you come home to.
A big thank you to
, , , , and my other Write of Passage friends for their help in making this piece sing like it does.
If you steep some blue pea vine flowers and cook the rice in the water ...the rice will be a beautiful blue color. Then if you add an acid(like a squeeze of lemon) the rice turns violet in color. So cool and fun for everyone to try. Tastes like normal rice! Oh how I wish I could add a picture!
“The stage on which you shine. The thing you come home to,” a beautiful encapsulation of motherhood. This was lovely to read and resonant for this mother of 3 and rice lover.