MANY years ago I was trying to get
an in house magazine ready and sud
denly the printer told me he couldn’t deliver. My dad who had a small printer attached to his computer said that he would get thirty copies out for me, if my mother would help him. As I watched them helping me out of a sticky situation, I found that I was getting impatient with the time they were taking, and I saw my mother glancing up at me, “What?” I asked her.
“Be patient son, we are old!” was all she said. The other day I saw my daughter getting impatient as she tried to tell me the working of a new gizmo that had hit the market and as I saw her impatience I remembered my mother and my own impatience with her.
An old man was sitting on the sofa in his house along with his 45 years old highly educated son. Suddenly a crow perched on their window. The father asked his son, “What is that?” “It’s a crow dad,” the son relied. After a few minutes, the Father asked his Son the 2nd time, “What is it?”
The son said “Father, I have just now told you “It’s a crow”.After a little while, the old father again asked his son the third time, “What is this?” At this time some expression of irritation was felt in the son’s tone when he said to his father with a rebuff. “It’s a crow, a crow”. A little after, the father again asked his son the fourth time, “What is it son?” This time the son shouted at his father, “Why do you keep asking me the same question again and again, although I have told you so many times ‘IT IS A CROW’. Are you not able to understand this?”
The father went to his room and came back with an old tattered diary, which he had maintained since his son was born. Opening a page, he asked his son to read that page. When the son read it, the following words were written:- “Today my little son aged three was sitting with me on the sofa, when a crow sat at the window. My son asked me 23 times what it was, and I replied to him all 23 times that it was a crow. I hugged him lovingly each time he asked me the same question again and again for 23 times. I never felt irritated. Instead I felt affection for my innocent child”.
There’s a message here for all of us, yes even me: When our parents get old, do not repulse them or look at them as a burden, but speak to them a gracious word, be cool, obedient, humble and kind to them. From today say to yourself, “I want to see my parents happy forever. They have cared for me ever since I was a little child. They have showered their selfless love on me. Say a prayer to God today, “I will serve my old parents in the best way just as they did for me many, many years ago..!”
