The aerial view is symmetrical. A woman and a boy sit across from one another. They’re situated on the perimeter of a rectangle: the woman on the right, the boy on the left, and the overhead light in the centre, its beams catching the grains of rice in each person’s bowl. The rice grains appear smooth, but their surfaces are abraded with the nails of the chef washing them before steaming. A Japanese saying goes: boil the dirt under somebody’s fingernails and drink it, so that you can inherit their good traits. Each time the woman washes rice for dinner, she hopes that her son will swallow the aspirations she sets for him.
The son just tastes rice. It’s mild, and he doesn’t chew on it enough for the sweetness to bloom on his tongue.
The overhead light flickers twice. The mother stands up and adjusts the light bulb. Symmetry breaks as she leaves the kitchen to find a replacement. The son picks at his food; chopsticks against ceramic reveal betrayal. Thick broccoli stalks snap in his temples, and his hands move automatically at the sight of food; his plate is filled, creating an asymmetry: the left side of the table heavier than the right.
“I saw you’ve started eating already,” says the mother. She screws a new lightbulb in place of the old one. She looks at her son. “I was only gone for five minutes.”
The boy rests his chopsticks on the rim of the bowl, but still grasps them with his white-knuckle hands. “Sorry, I was hungry,” he replies, “I didn’t think you’d care.”
“Well, I do, and it seems like you have no idea where you come from.”
“That’s extreme.”
The mother watches as her son keeps eating without even much of a thank you. He consumes food because it makes him full, and she gets fuller by watching, a bitterness coating her tongue and stomach lining. It is a reflection of her more than it is of him; each bite distorting the mirror until bile rises in her throat.
She pushes her chair back. The cutlery jumps as she sits down. Her voice is taut. “Do you realize how much you lack respect for your name? For me? Do you realize how you dress–” (she juts her chin towards his ripped jeans) “–is an insult to me?”
“Can we just have dinner? I didn’t mean to —”
“Why is half of my cooking gone? You couldn’t even have said grace before eating like an animal?”
The mother serves herself what’s left in the dish. Is it just food?
Her son sucks his teeth to remove broccoli fibres.
The table remains asymmetrical.
“Just imagine what Grandma would say, since you can’t even speak her language.”
The new lightbulb is a different colour tone — a bit more fluorescent than the other warm bulbs — and it shines on the boy’s face as his interrogation proceeds. Grandma used to care about balance, and the only thing bothering her now was the cut-off sentences that she supervised from her photo hung high up on the wall, right underneath the ceiling.
“But you made this happen,” protests the boy, “You mostly spoke to me in English.”
The grandma’s face is yearning in her photograph. Her head’s tilted such that the whites of her eyes peek above her irises; her pupils are centred on an object right below her. She wants whatever that thing is, but she passes without attaining it. Her presence isn’t haunting, but instead a poking reminder. Even without looking all the way up, she meets halfway — she’s yet to complete her ascent.
And she hears
Clashing across the kitchen table
a battlefield now,
with crossed arms for shields
and words hurled like daggers —
Sharp, precise, and pointed.
Your armour is heavy, but
You wear it with pride.
He drags his feet,
buckling beneath a burden
He never asked to bear.
I crossed borders with no sword,
only stories and stubborn hope.
Now I watch my words
Sharpened into weapons,
the soft language of lullabies
Shouted like battle cries
in this war of words.
The peace I once pursued
Feels so out of reach.
Retreat, I want to say,
Please —
Surrender.
They keep going.
The food sits cold.
“What about all the times on New Year’s when I did all the customs without a problem? Wasn’t Grandma impressed? Don’t I eat our food?”
“Our?”
The mother sets her chopsticks down. Laughter escapes from her with each eye blink, pressing itself onto her wrinkles, but it’s a laughter that deflects more than it welcomes. “Our. Really? The person I see in front of me is foreign.”
“Why do I need to prove to you — my mother — what I am?”
“That was who Grandma was,” she mutters.
I arrived wrapped in what I knew —
pieces of home stitched into my mind:
language and lullabies,
rhythms and rituals,
familiar — perhaps worn thin by the crossing,
but still enough to keep me warm.
At first, it was comfort —
the scent of home in every simmered meal,
my mother’s voice folded into each song,
prayers whispered soft as breath
at the close of every long day.
But over time, the softness stiffened.
What once draped gently
hardened at the seams.
I grew rigid with fear,
and these memories —
I held them tighter still.
Traditions I trusted,
rituals I revered,
turned to a cold, hard shell —
meant to protect,
but lonely to wear.
Now he stands
dressed in the garments
of two worlds crossing —
not because he cast me off,
but because he tailored
what I gave him.
Like the silks and satins
cherished by my ancestors —
and yours —
our home is worn,
reshaped,
and handed down.
And if I could begin again,
I would loosen the collar,
roll up the sleeves,
and learn to live —
not just wrapped in the past,
but moving freely
in what is still being made.
“I don’t need your validation to practice my culture.”
The sky is heather grey, and shadows swoop through the dining room. Wind breathes its life through the backyard trees that pattern the walls. Mother and son are silent to refill their mouths with words that bite.
From above, their resemblances are uncanny; both share a face and build that could have only been granted through inheritance. This is how I watch you die. Cutting their ever-evolving lineage until they stand alone on opposite ends; their arbitrary differences create asymmetry.
The boy stares at his cold mound of rice and notices how the surface doesn’t glisten anymore. They’ve become dull, revealing the tiny scratches on each oval surface.
“That’s what makes you foreign to me.”
Your inheritance is a gift.
Do you give to be thanked —
to be praised, exalted,
each time the thing you offered
is lifted, or used?
Or do you give for the quiet joy
of giving itself?
What I gave you
is his now.
And what endures
is not what’s left untouched,
but what is chosen,
loved, lived with —
used, worn,
and made anew.
This life that he’s learning,
this path that he’s clearing —
It all belongs to him.
Set your pride down.
Let it soften into joy.
The joy of seeing your gift
carried forward,
however he chooses
to hold it.
Space is held for what appears eternal, but is only the infinitesimal gap between inhale and exhale. A voice courses through the room and goes back to mute.
The mother gets up from her chair and clears her plate, and with a slight jerk, retreats to clear her son’s plate. Two sets of eyes fix on her as she silently starts washing it in the kitchen.
“Thank you for dinner,” calls the son.
Header Image Source: Unsplash
