"How do you mean to tell me that you are not hungry?"
An angry hand slammed on the table and the food left half eaten on the plate, threatened to fall.
Jonessa sat teary eyed, hands in her lap, lips trembling as her grandmother eyed her incredulously.
Her belly ached. She had eaten her fill, but the plate was not empty, and so her grandmother insisted that she should eat still.
"Better belly bust than good food waste," the elderly woman intoned in Caribbean twang. "You young people will never understand what it is like to go hungry. You don't know what it is to wish you had food to eat because for days your plate is empty. You young people could afford to be picky. But not by me, you don't have that luxury. Come, come, hurry up and make haste! Pick up the spoon and clean this plate!"
And the child, of course, with shaking hand, filled a spoon with rice and beans and chewed and chewed and choked and chewed, for she knew she had to eat until her plate was clean.
Hara hachi bu. If only Jonessa's grandmother knew that eating and leaving a little wasn't waste. If only her grandmother had been to that place known as the Blue Zone where among the centenarians it is known that the secret to longevity is not eating plenty but just enough, maybe her grandmother wouldn't suffer from arthritis and complain every time it rained.
Eat 80% and no more. If only her grandmother had an inkling, the slightest clue, then the little girl wouldn't have to chew rice until it turned to water.
But her grandmother did not know. And so, Jonessa scraped her spoon on her plate, chewing and choking, and torturing her stomach so she could protect her skin from the whistling of her grandma's whip.
"Next time, grandma," she asked timidly. "Could you take out less food for me?"
Hi guys,
Would you care to attempt a five minute freewrite prompt?
This prompt, posted by @mariannewest in the Freewriters Community, is super fun and the guidelines are simple:
Prompt: blue zone
- Set your timer for 5 minutes
- Start writing
- Use the hashtag #freewrite
Please consider participating, I'd love to read your entry!