She once told me, “If you eat every grain of rice, you’ll grow up to be beautiful.”

Though the translation from Chinese to English may not shine through as clearly, my grandmother meant well. Her roots were enriched in the far-off village plains of China, where food was not always plenty, and starvation was never far fetched. Not to mention, I was an especially lanky child, always reluctant to touch the meat on my plate.  So I always stood out.  Not only because I was skinny, or the only Chinese girl in my school, but also because I was always the tallest.

So when the ornate, painted rice bowls were handed out before dinner, I always hoped mine would be filled like everyone else’s.  A steamy, heaping pile of hope that would someday enrich a girl to fit in just a little better.

Around the table each person had their own style.  My mom held her rice bowl up in one hand, while chopsticks scraped and shoveled with the other.  My brother held his chopsticks with perfect form towards the top, with an inch between each stick.  Even today, I still hold my chopsticks like a five year old round-eye, seconds away from giving up and just stabbing my food.

But as haphazard as I may appear while eating, I am still efficient. Enough so that while I made my way down to the bottom of a bowl, I often hoped to find single grains of rice clinging to the edges.  A challenge if you will for my imperfect form to practice it’s precision.

I always picked up every last grain. Still do. I supposed it’s an irrational hope that never died.

But I love rice. I often wonder if my grandmother’s superstition contributed to my love affair with rice.  Even as an adult, I would rather sit down to a plain bowl of rice than have a thick, juicy steak.  Nothing in the kitchen reminds me more of home, or comforts my body and soul than the smell of steaming rice, or the sound of grains tinkering into a steel pot.

I love it, and perhaps even the irrational hope it carries.

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