Extra Protein

Sanaa Kahloon

My dad reached for a piece of roti while visiting his sister’s house in the village, laughing over my mother’s protests of “there are keedya! You’re going to get sick!” At that point, I didn’t know much Punjabi, but I recognized the word for ants. I wrinkled my nose at my dad, unable to comprehend why he would want his flatbread when he knew there were bugs in it.

Later that night, as my dad tucked me in, he told me a story about his grandmother. His mother had died when he was very young, so this was the only mother figure he ever had. He closed his eyes, his expression far away from the warm, spacious room we were in.

His grandmother was a busy, vibrant woman. Every morning and every night, she fed each of her grandkids from the 5 gallon pot she toiled behind during the hot hours of the day. She made it her life’s work to shower her offspring in whatever blessings she had, and the one most readily available to her was the rice my father worked to farm.

My dad, as was traditional, never spent much time in the kitchen. As far as he was concerned, his responsibility to feed his family ended as soon as he’d picked the last of the rice. Because of this, he didn’t know what took his grandmother so long in the kitchen. It was only on a day when he came home earlier than usual that he saw his grandmother, bent with old age and fatigue, kneeling over a large bag of rice. Lovingly, painstakingly, she was inspecting every grain for the bugs that plagued them, putting clean rice in a bin to be tightly sealed.

Stunned, my teenage father offered to help her. She smiled wryly, gesturing at the unopened bags of flour that were clearly next in line for her hawk-eyed inspection, and said “this isn’t what you were meant for.” Most likely, she meant that as a boy, he wasn’t meant to spend hours in the kitchen the way she and his sisters supposedly were. But when my dad told me this story, the shine of emotion in his eyes told me that it meant more to him. It was another bit of fuel for his flaming ambition, the promise that neither he nor the woman he married would ever have to kneel on the floor for hours on end to ensure that the food was clean. The fact that my mother and I could turn our noses up at bread “with some extra protein” was proof that he’d succeeded, that he’d escaped the cycle of poverty mostly unscathed.

I am separated from my great-grandmother by 4 generations and a headstone that went up decades before I was born. Still, ever since my dad told me that story, I think of her each time I reach for the bag of flour that I know will always be clean. As I learn how to cook for enjoyment, not out of necessity, I think about her labor of love. Above all, I think about the expression in my father’s eyes when he finally opened them after telling the story. There was sadness there, yes, but above all – gratitude.