What Rice Means to Me

Hello, I'm Rindark.
I'm sometimes called a 'super househusband,' but in reality, I'm just an ordinary guy in his 50s who used to spend his days going back and forth between the kitchen and the supermarket to fill the stomachs of growing children and three ravenous cats.

Now, this might be sudden, but what does 'rice' mean to you?
A source of energy? The star of the dinner table? To me, rice is something a bit more complex—and yet, in a way, dearer—than just a simple food item.

Rice has been my family's industry for generations, and it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that this rice is what allowed our family to prosper.
The reason is that, long ago, we were such large landowners that we were even patronized by the feudal lord, and judging by the stories I heard from my grandfather and others, it seems we were quite the wealthy estate.
I can imagine that the scale of that legacy must have been a significant pressure on both my grandfather and my father.

✅ The story about having a live-in maid

When my father was still small, it is said that our house had a live-in maid.
Meals were prepared in the morning, and dirty clothes would somehow become clean.
My family once had a life that sounded just like something out of a drama.

When I heard that story, my wife had just started a job that required her to live away from home, and I was in the middle of the chaos of single-handedly raising our children.
Mornings were a battlefield, and nights were spent in exhaustion.
In the midst of those days, I remember looking off into the distance and thinking, 'A maid, huh...' My father grew up in a house with a maid, and yet I, his son, was somehow transcending time and space to take on all the housework and childcare myself.
It's the irony of life, or perhaps its humor.

By the time I was old enough to understand, of course, there wasn't a trace of that left.
Only the hollowed-out authority of being the 'eldest son of the main family' remained, like a scratch on an old pillar.
In that house, I grew up watching my father drown in alcohol.
As an adult child, home was not a place of peace for me.
That's why the past glory of 'having a maid' sounded like a fairy tale from another world.

✅ Our land extended quite far from our family home

This is also one of those heroic tales I heard from my grandfather and the elderly people in the neighborhood.
'Where that school is built used to be the Rindark family's rice field, you know.' 'That industrial park, too, all of it.'

When I was a child, I would honestly be amazed, saying, 'Wow, that's incredible!' but as I became an adult, I gradually began to understand the weight of those words.
There was a time when I was unable to move due to depression and panic disorder, and even just breathing was painful.
At such times, I would suddenly imagine the landscape of those vast rice fields.

Golden ears of rice shining, blowing in the wind, stretching on forever.
My ancestors who must have tilled that land, grown the rice, and supported the family.
I, their descendant, was huddled in the corner of a room, feeling like I was about to be crushed by an indescribable anxiety.
The sheer gap between those two realities was so absurd that I sometimes found myself laughing.
It was a laugh like a single ray of light seen from the depths of despair.

Perhaps it was because I experienced illness that I realized this.
Vast land and past glory cannot save my heart.
What I truly sought was a modest place where I could say 'I'm home' with peace of mind.

✅ Summary

Life is unpredictable.
Even while listening to legends of great landowners like a lullaby, I grew up without ever feeling that abundance.
Rather, that 'invisible pressure' may have been one of the causes of my difficulty in living.

That is why, for me now, 'rice' evokes special emotions.

It is not a longing for past glory.
Rather, it is a sense of relief at being freed from those legends, and a genuine affection for the bowl of rice I cook with my own hands.
The weekends when my wife finishes her assignment away from home and our family gathers around the table, however irregularly.
The sound of my daughter and son saying, 'Can I have seconds?'
My wife whispering, 'Thank you for everything,' while drinking the coffee I brewed.
That casual, everyday life is my own 'bountiful harvest,' far more valuable than the vast rice fields of the past.

Thinking about such things, I wash the rice again today.
Feeling the story that dwells in every single grain.
That is the modest, irreplaceable form of happiness I found after taking many detours.

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