My mother sits with arms folded at the kitchen table for what feels like hours.
She stares at me intently while I listen to the ticking of the clock as the seconds and minutes pass.
With pursed lips, she says, “Dais, eat.”
She waits for me to eat a heaping bowl of rice. I am her only child, so she is more patient with me than most parents. I shove a rounded spoonful of rice into my mouth, using my tongue to stuff it into the sides of my cheeks, making them puff out.
“Swallow your food,” she says.
I chew the reserves and ingest them. I want to gag, but I choke it down anyway. I don’t talk back because I know what will come next if I do. Pure disobedience is brought swiftly; a tiny little pinch with a twist underneath my arm is enough of a reprimand.
I learned over time, pain does not bring about change. Unlike my own children, they carry no fear, not like I did. Kindness and a good dose of patience are all that is needed, and maybe a stint in the corner.
It usually takes one harsh look from my mother to make me well up in tears, a pinch is given if she sees me break out into big crocodile tears.
“Dais, stop it. Hiya, you hab nothing to cry about.”
It is from a handful of moments like those I learn not to cry.
I am a Filipina-Chinese American girl and not a fan of rice. Unfortunately, it is served for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Rice porridge with tiny bits of freeze-dried shredded pork for breakfast. Lunch is rice with liver and onions. Dinner is chicken Adobo with a large portion of rice, the vinegar emitted from this dish alone makes me want to run in the other direction. Thankfully, my stepdad is Polish-Italian. On the weekends, he makes pancakes and spaghetti dinners to add variety.
I do not tell my mother I long for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, Kraft macaroni and cheese, or grilled American cheese sandwiches cut in a diagonal (my absolute favorite). These are the kinds of food I want to eat. The food provided when I come over to play at a friend’s house. In turn, my friends scowl at their food, and I wonder why they don’t thank their mother for such a delicacy.
I don’t bring up the foods I eat at my friend’s house. Doing so brings a lecture, “Dais, be lucky you hab something to eat. Not like the people who have nothing to eat and nothing to wear.”
When she finally gives up and leaves the table with her final orders to eat everything, I rush over to the trash can and spit it out, covering it with paper towels so my ruse goes unnoticed. I repeat the process until my bowl is empty. After a close inspection of my bowl and, to my relief, not the trash can, I am excused to leave the table, with the next battle awaiting my next meal.
Preparing food for me and watching me eat it was her love language, and I stomped all over it because I didn’t know any better.
It has taken me years to understand this. I realize I do the same thing with my own children. I prepare food for my family anxious to see if they enjoyed it. When their eyes light up after their first bite, I feel like I have accomplished something significant.
It is my primary love language, I should have known that I learned that from my own mother. The first person in my life to show me how to express love to those I care most about.