When I was a girl, I was always impatient. My grandmother, in her wisdom to teach me, would say, “a watched pot never boils”. She told me this expression had been given to her by her own grandmother when they cooked together. My grandmother said if she put water on the fire to boil, and if she only stood beside the fire to watch the pot, she would be scolded for not finding useful work before the kettle’s whistle.
In the afternoons of my childhood, the ice cream truck would ride through neighborhoods announcing its arrival with a familiar tune over a loud speaker. I eagerly waited by the door for the familiar sound on days when I had earned a nickel for a frozen fruit concoction. My grandmother would tell me that as long as I stood waiting for the truck, it wouldn’t come, but if I found something useful to do like dusting or sweeping, the truck would arrive sooner – or so it would seem. My grandmother was right, I discovered.
Of course, if I had waited by the door, the truck would have eventually come, and the pot of water would have eventually come to a boil while she only waited. The point of this story was that if we do nothing while we are waiting for something, the waiting itself will seem longer. My grandmother wanted to teach me not to wait idly for things to happen in life, but to always make the most of my time by doing meaningful activities or work.
I thought of this story a few days ago. Each day I stayed on the first floor of my house near my front door. Certainly I could not miss the mail person’s “knock, knock” with a special delivery long overdue from the USA. Three days after the package was supposed to have come, I awoke one morning with a new attitude. I knew I should continue my daily life as usual and stop my waiting by the door. I decided the package had probably been lost in the mail.
About two hours later, I was on the second floor in my daughter’s long abandoned bedroom cleaning when I heard the familiar “knock, knock” on my front door. I flew down the stairs to the genkan and called out in my heavily accented Nihongo “chotto matte, kudasai” while wondering who was at my door so early in the morning. I was surprised to see the familiar red mail truck and a smiling young woman holding my package from the US.
As I stamped my hanko on the paper she extended, I thought of my grandmother’s words long ago and smiled. The day I had stopped “watching the pot”, it had finally boiled. Out loud, I spoke to my grandmother. “Thank you for your teaching,” I said to my empty room. I felt my grandmother’s smile. Although she left this life several years ago, her many words of wisdom live on in me today.
Debra Ryufuku
