'Suddenly for my father, chewing with your mouth open was no longer an issue: One cannot chew when one no longer can afford food to chew.'
It’s deep and dry and cracked—and self-inflicted. The mark is a remnant of his six years on a Communist labor farm in his youth, when one night he purposely took a scythe to his flesh to cause enough injury to be granted rest, despite not completing his daily quota.As a result, decades later, even two grains left behind in a rice bowl would lead to a lecture on how many years my dad spent hunched over in the rice field—and out would come the heel of proof.
With a working mother, a sick father, and costly daycare out of the question, my father spent his childhood roaming the streets, eating whatever detritus he found on the sidewalk, including the contents of olive pits, knocked open with a brick.
What he does remember is making eggs, when they could get them. His bedridden father could no longer cook them for himself, but remembered his nutritional training from his time in the military—so he’d direct his sons instead. My grandfather succumbed to tuberculosis and politics on Oct. 24, 1967. My dad was six weeks shy of his 12th birthday.
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