For the one whose plate always goes cold
It is a small thing, the plate. It is also the whole house standing.
You are the last to sit and the first to rise. Everyone is fed before your own fork is lifted. By the time you reach the table the food has gone quiet, and you eat it anyway, leaning on the counter, calling it nothing.
So hear me, from an old woman who did forty years of the same.
They need to see you eat. Not once at a wedding. On a Tuesday. A plate of your own, unhurried, as if your hunger matters, because it does. Your children are learning from you what a woman is worth. They will copy the lesson in their own houses.
And you are not the pillar holding up the sky. Allah holds the sky. You hold the plates. Only one of those can be put down.
Small things, because a body is kept in small things:
- Sit before the food goes cold.
- Let someone else fetch the water, and say thank you instead of no, no, I have it.
- Eat something warm, slowly, at least once tomorrow.
- Let yourself be fed. It is how a family learns to carry each other.
And if no one gets up to help, sit anyway.
May Allah give you a warm plate, a slow hour, and people who notice your hands.
If you want one written for a person you name, write to me at [email protected].
From Ummi