Translated…
There’s this story: a widow who’d loved her son very much worked very hard, in order to buy more chicken, for her son to get healthier, she’d always saved the drumsticks for him, and when the son asked his mother why she’d not had any meats and just chewed on the necks, the widow told him that she’d enjoyed the necks, the son believed his mother’s statements, and, when she’d died, he’d offered the chicken necks to her, and, the neighbors reminded him, that his mother didn’t actually enjoyed the chicken necks, it’s that she was saving the better parts of the chicken for him.
Last week, my mother shopped at the marketplace for fish, and cooked it for supper. And, all of us children, after we’re adults, we’d not found enough time to spend with them, only on the long holidays, would we be able to make it home. My mother saw me home, she’d especially bought the fish from the oceans she’d never cooked before that the vendor had recommended to her, said it was nutritious and delicious too.
still not my photo…
My mother is a great cook, she’d cooked the fish so wonderfully, and the only thing about that fish was that there were, too many bones. Of the normal fishes, other than the spines, or inside the stomach, where there would be more bones, there would rarely be, any more bone pieces, but, this particular fish, had at least a piece of bone each piece we’d managed to get with our chopsticks. At first, I wasn’t aware of this, I’d bitten it down, and, the thin bones had, pricked my gums, I’d wanted to turn my head around, to remind my father to be careful when he was eating, but, he’d already started, taking the bones out already, then, perhaps it was, how grueling, how trying it was, that he’d stopped, eating the fish.
My mother didn’t notice our thoughts about the deep sea fish, asked us if it’d tasted okay? I’d told her, that the meat was firm, without the stench, tasted wonderful, I’d not told her of how many small pieces of bones there were, how it wasn’t convenient to eat it at all. My father kept his usual silence, but he was always not at all talkative, and my mother didn’t mind his silence.
The supper for the next evening, I saw that exact same fish from the sea, served on the tables, with a different sauce, but, the fishbone were still there, in the numbers. After supper started, I’d picked at my food as I ate, and contemplated on how I was going to tell my mother, to never by this sort of fish again, that it was, hard to swallow, my father thought that mackerels were troubling enough to eat, and this sort of fish, harder to handle than mackerels. After my father put down his bowl, my mother asked him why he’d not have more fish? He’d mumbled, “Too many bones.”, my mother heard my father’s complaints, and believed that it was because my father was tired from having the same food items.
the X-Ray of a fish here…
And, for this meal in particular, I’d, finished off ALL the leftover fish, my mother told me to eat my father’s portion too, as she’d mumbled on how costly the fishes from the sea were, that if it wasn’t the nutritional values, she’d never bought them in the first place. My father didn’t say a thing, just pretended he was watching television, and brushed her words off. I think, my father shared the same sentiments as I, my mother worked hard enough, to prepare the three meals a day for us, and we’d not felt right, to voice out our complaints to her.
“Where’s the bone?”, my mother lowered her voice and asked once more.
All of a sudden, I was reminded of the story of the son using the chicken necks as offerings to his dead mother, I thought, that my mother only ate the heads of the fishes, saved the meaty parts for her family, naturally, she’d not known of how there are, so many smaller pieces of bones in the flesh of the fishes she’d bought.
So, in this, the child here was able to empathize, because he’d understood that his mother saved the better parts of the fish for the rest of the family, because she’d wanted the best for her loved ones, and, that, is how she’d shown the love to her family, and, after realizing this, the narrator gained an understanding of how and why his mother would save the body, and, stopped complaining about it.