Parents

It seems that parents have always been more restricted, less fortunate and poorer!
I have a deal with Jasmine. For reading each book ( now only chapter books) or doing something remarkably nice, she gets a star in a special notebook. I write down the name of the book or the action that has caused this star to go in there. I've even bought sticky colorful stars, just to make this procedure more interesting. At first, I bought her a present after each 5 star. Then to help her gather money for buying her piano, I gave her 15$. During the summer or holidays, the prize of reading books is doubled and you can imagine that I've been paying a lot of these 15-dollars lately. That's OK, but today I got upset when I heard her saying:" I want to buy something" and when I asked her what she had no answer, she just wanted to spend some money.

Luckily, she asked me what was it I wanted to buy in my childhood. The first thing that came to my mind was a microscope. For about three years, when I was in secondary school, I wanted to have a microscope, one that I could afford. I went to buy one after I had collected some money( mostly pocket-money and the money I could gather during Iranian new year's presents) . I had something around 1000 Tomans ( Now equal to around 1.5$) . Just imagine my face when I realized the cheapest one was around 6000 Tomans! It would take me years to collect this money, besides prices go up in Iran because of inflation. So I painfully realized that I simply cann't afford one. A few months later, my mom ( peace be upen her) solved the problem and bought me little one from a friend.

I told this history to depict the difference between generations. I'm sure my mom and dad did their best, well at least according to their level of knowledge and foreseeing. They also told of stories about their childhood which of course was much worse than ours. Things like asking money to buy bus tickets to go to school from an older brother and being accused of asking for inheritance money, or walking more than 10 kilometers to go to school. When hearing these and the like, we were of course too grateful for what we had.

So buying a little microscope was perhaps too fancy for my parents. One generation after, here I am telling the story of buying a microscope to my little daughter. I have told my wife that when our kids grow up, they'll definitely tell to their kids similiar stories. I mean no matter how wise you are, or how you try for your kids' flourishing, "You could have done better" in their idea when they are old enough to criticize you.