Stone Soup
I don’t remember much about my kindergarten or first-grade experience. Or for that matter, second grade. Third grade, when I was probably eight, was when more images became embedded. On that basis, I infer that the younger years were not a complete failure, though miscues that result in total public humiliation are, at any age, better left forgotten. The unmitigated disasters of later years stay with me, in case my humility quotient ever drops too low, though as the years pass, they tend not to poke so deeply into the semi-flated ego.
This comes to mind the day after I was part of an audience of parents, step-grandparents, and every other possible configuration of responsible adults, no doubt, who had come to witness a musical presentation at Connor’s school. He’s Trent’s son who’s Linda’s son. Connor’s a coupla weeks shy of six, and with his classmates and those from the exalted first grade, performed the story of Stone Soup, with maybe thirty of the fifty children stepping forward to deliver a line or two, and all the students together — more or less — singing their way through the rest of the story.
Neither Linda nor Trent had heard the story of Stone Soup before, but it had always been an important one for me. It’s about three soldiers coming home from war. They pass through a village in the country for whom they had fought, and they ask for food and shelter. But villagers say they have nothing left. Which wasn’t really true. They had some provisions left — not a lot — and they weren’t ready to share.
So the soldiers said they would make stone soup for everyone. They got a big caldron, filled it with water, lit a fire underneath, and then added a stone to it. One of the soldiers suggested that it could be a really good soup if only they had a bone. Well, one of the villagers says he may have something, and returns with a great bone. After a while, one of the other soldiers said it would be even better if they might have some vegetable roots or stalks, just for body. And lo and behold, another villager goes to look and comes back with something from the back of the larder.
After a while, the pot is filled with meat and vegetables. The solders and the town get to know each other. They have a great feast, and that night, the soldiers sleep in the most comfortable beds in town. It was an inspirational story for me when I first heard it more than forty years ago, and it remains valuable today. Wouldn’t it be neat, if instead of disparaging those among us in need, we gave them both our help and our love? It’s much less expensive, in the long run, than the price of holding fear and denial.
That said, Linda is better with children than I, and she truly likes to attend these sorts of events. If I hadn’t explained the story of Stone Soup, neither she nor Trent would have had a clue — just listening to the children speaking and singing their parts — what the plot, the characters, or the moral were. Delighted to enlighten, and next time, I’ll wait until the English language version is released.
And that’s SetonnoteS...I’m Tony Seton.