From what I can remember, there used to be only a few stores in our village growing up. You were considered ‘rich’ if you owned one. It didn’t matter if all you had were a few canned food on the shelves and a few rubbered jandals scattered on the side. These stores aren’t like the 711 here, they’re located as a small extension of your home. It’s mostly closed, and if you need to buy something you either catch the shop keeper while they’re inside the store [with other customers] or you yell out their name and wait until they’re done with whatever it is they’re doing before they can serve you. Usually, they’ll just yell back asking what it is you need and most times it’s either they’re sold out or they don’t have it.

Anyways, I’ve heard stories several times growing up where we were known as the ‘half a kilo’ family. My father was a fisherman and worked both the sea and land to provide for our needs. My mother was a middle school teacher growing up, so in a sense we were considered a middle class family, even though we didn’t own a store.

The only time we would eat meat bought from the store was when my father didn’t go fishing, and when we bought meat from the store it was always ‘half a kilo’. The store keepers in the village knew that if either one of us kids showed up to buy meat – they would automatically reach for the ‘half a kilo’ meat bag. When we get home with the ‘half a kilo’ whether it’s chicken or lamb, my mother would always make soup out of it. Soup, quickly became an everyday meal in our household. We had soup during the hottest summer days and soup during the harsh winters.

When my Husband and I got married a few years ago, we rented our first one bedroom apartment in the middle of South Provo. My husband got a job working at a disability care facility where he was paid minimum wage. We often struggled to make ends meet with the amount of income we had, but we never seemed to go without. The first night he got home from work, I made him soup. He complimented me on the yummy dish and said I did a great job preparing dinner. The following nights, we continued to have soup for dinner. After a few weeks of having soup for dinner, my Husband asked if I knew any other recipes. I replied, of course! When he got home, I had made soup again – but this time I added ramen noodles to the soup! Imagine his surprise.

I’ve often reflected throughout the years, especially now that I’m married with a family of my own, and wondered why was it always just ‘half a kilo’ and why soup?

As I grabbed the last four pieces of chicken meat from my freezer to make soup, I suddenly knew why!

I probably complained every day about having soup for dinner, or why there isn’t enough meat in my soup, or why we never got 1 kilo of meat like everyone else in the village. I envied my friends that had something else other than soup for dinner, and I always made sure that I ate at theirs instead of mine.

Needless to say, I failed to see that during the times we had soup for dinner, my siblings and I probably had all of the ‘half a kilo’ meat in our bowls, which meant that deeply nestled inside my parents bowls was nothing but soup water and veggies. It’s the kind of sacrifices we make as parents for our kids.

So as I sit down tonight to enjoy my hot bowl of chicken soup… errr water, I will do so with a heart full of gratitude.