I’ve never had time for my own children. Jobs and affairs, you know. My children never had anything to complain about: I had enough money to satisfy their candy-and-console needs. I turned a blind eye to their shortcomings, and they forgave me for lack of parental attention.
Their sweet and soft childhood passed quickly. We went headlong into the difficult adolescence. First quarrels, first real feelings. It dawned on me that my children had grown up without love. I did too little to teach them to distinguish good from evil and to weed out bad habits.
After a quarrel, I was standing on the kitchen peeling onions and tears were flowing out of my eyes. My mom came into the room:
“Why are you crying?”
“You know, this onion is so stingy. There must be onion varieties that don’t sting your eyes!”
“It must have had too little water.”
That was how I realized: if you give too little water to your children while they are young, they will bring many tears to the people around them once they grow up.
Translated by The Catalog of Good Deeds
