The MotherVerse Blog: mothering out loud

“Eat your vegetables. They’ll make you look young longer,” was what my grandmother used to say to me every time I hesitate to eat my greens.

I grew up eating yam leaves, cooked in yellow creamy coconut milk-based gravy to mask its bitterness, raw fresh herbs like pennywort leaves and four angled bean, wild fern shoots also cooked in yellow coconut milk-based gravy among other more common vegetables. I suppose maybe I did balk at the bitterness of the yam leaves, but I have to say I rather miss them now.

My grandmother is rather obsessed with herbs, as most Malays are. Keeping a youthful appearance is somewhat of a priority, and herbs are usually the means to attain it. I remember when an aunt once remarked about my hair,

“Your hair used to be so black and thick. What happened? Eat lots of tomatoes. You haven’t been eating your tomatoes?”

I was in my teens when she said that. Boy, if she looks at my hair now, I wonder how many bushels of tomatoes she would ‘prescribe’ for me.

My grandmother’s obsession with natural remedies once resulted in tanning my skin. So intent was she in having my hair black, shiny, and healthy, that she applied coconut oil to my hair every day before I went to school, in my elementary school years. Since we had to gather for our pre-class assemblies on the field, usually under the hot tropical sun (Malaysia is quite close to the equator), the coconut oil that was so lovingly massaged into my hair began to increase in viscosity and trickle down my forehead, face, and neck, thereby literally ‘frying’ me to a crispy brown. Suffice it to say, I was a rather dark-skinned girl for those couple of years, before my natural skin color resumed in my teen years.

So it is with that mentality that I urge my girls to eat their greens. You tell yourself you don’t want to be like your parents, or your grandmother, but unconsciously, you do find yourself, as a parent, repeating the same phrases your parents used to utter.

“You’d better eat your greens, or your skin might look bad. My grandmother used to tell me…”

I know, I know…our children don’t like the ‘when I was your age..’ lectures, but how could I resist?

I could either tell them,

“Eat your vegetables. They’re good for you.”

Or, I could take the vanity route,

“Eat your vegetables. Your skin will look nice.”

As a girl budding into the tween and teen years, which would you rather hear?

Maybe my grandmother really knew what she was doing when she nagged me to eat my greens.