A Rice Tale
John and Audra sent Ray and me home from Henry’s birthday party with three sets of party favors, one for each of us and one for Clara. Our favors were inside miniature sand buckets. Each included stickers and a craft kit, plus a miniature scoop, rake, and shovel. I picked out our favorite colors: yellow for Ray, pink for Clara, and blue for me.
Yesterday morning Clara and I were sitting at the kiddie table in our office sharing a LÄRABAR (on two special plates chosen by Clara) and coconut water in teeny glasses (this is Little and Clara’s special snack), while Wesley explored on the floor.
Clara had already completed her craft kit, but she wanted to make another one. When we finished that, she wanted to pretend to play in the sand with the miniature sandbox toys. Instead I got some white rice and we put it into a casserole. We had fun making a cake and hiding things for each other to find.
I can get a big bag of rice for not much money, so it seems like a reasonable toy to me. The reason I had rice handy yesterday morning was because I had used it to make patriotic pinwheels stand up in containers on the 4th of July.
Still, I always think twice about rice. My college roommate was born in Communist China about 1950. When she was a girl, she lived through the horrible Chinese famine that occurred during Mao Zedong’s “Great Leap Forward.”
While visiting my former roommate at her home in California a few years ago, we talked about the rice left over in her rice cooker after a meal. She told me that the experience of the famine caused Chinese to consider rice as so valuable it is not to be wasted.
What is valuable to one person can seem commonplace to another. Any mother finds this out when she throws something away and then her three year old falls apart because that thing was important to him.
It is always challenging to “get inside” the head and heart of another person, but it is worth the effort. It is the very best way to love someone else. It takes a lifetime to learn how to . . .
Respect what is right in the sight of all men.
Romans 12:17
. . . and how to . . .
“In everything, therefore,
treat people the same way you want them to treat you,
for this is the Law and the Prophets.
Matthew 7:12