Harvest and Gratitude

The Farmer's Cart at Dusk

"Gratitude is only good manners, the please and thank you that a child learns at the table," said the innkeeper, watching the farmer's empty cart rattle back down the valley road. "So I said my thank you, and he said it was nothing, and now we are square until next year."

"If gratitude were only manners, the proverbs would have very little to say about it, and instead they say a great deal," said the traveler, who had stayed on to help with the sacks. "Hardly any of them talk about the words you say at the table. They talk about memory, about remembering where the water came from long after you have drunk it."

All afternoon, as she had promised, she had carried the sacks of grain and the baskets of apples into the cool room behind the kitchen. The first evening of autumn had brought a fresh wind from the hills, and the innkeeper had lit the lantern by the door a little earlier than in summer.

She sat down on the bench with her notebook, and the innkeeper brought two apples from the top of the nearest basket. The lantern's flame leaned a little in the new wind, and its light fell across the open pages.

Water and Its Source

In Chinese there is a short saying of four syllables, "Yǐn shuǐ sī yuán", which means "when you drink water, think of its source". It is used for any kind of debt of the heart. It may be owed to teachers, to parents, to the people who built the road you walk on, or to a country kitchen that once fed you when you were hungry. In Vietnamese, written in its own Latin letters, there is "Ăn quả nhớ kẻ trồng cây", "when you eat the fruit, remember the one who planted the tree". It is one of the first sayings many children learn, and it is often heard when families gather to remember their elders and those who came before them. Both sayings point past the person standing in front of you toward someone you may never see. The water came from a spring somebody found, and the fruit hung on a tree somebody planted long before you were hungry.

Imagine you have stopped to rest in an old orchard on a hillside during a long walk. The owner has told you to take as many peaches as you like. "My grandfather planted these trees the year my father was born, and he never tasted a single peach from them," says the owner, sitting down beside you on the grass. "When you eat the fruit, remember the one who planted the tree," you say, and the owner nods, pleased that a stranger knows it.

"So it is not the farmer alone I should be thanking," said the innkeeper slowly, "but the rain, and his father, and whoever first cleared that field on the slope."

Stones in the Well

Some sayings, the traveler went on, teach gratitude by showing its opposite. In Hebrew there is an old saying, "Be'er she-shatita mimena al tizrok bo even", "do not throw a stone into the well you have drunk from". It is said to anyone tempted to speak badly of a place, a teacher or an old employer that once gave them what they needed. In English, "Don't bite the hand that feeds you" says the same thing about the hand that holds out the food. In Hindi and Urdu there is "Jis thali mein khana, usi mein chhed karna", "to make a hole in the very plate you eat from". It is said with real disapproval of someone who harms the people who have looked after them.

Imagine you have left a job at a guesthouse by the sea after a long season, and on your last evening the other workers start to grumble about the owner. "She paid us late twice, and she never once let us take a Sunday off," says one of them, waiting for you to agree. "That is true, but she also took me in when I arrived here with no money at all," you answer. "I will not throw a stone into the well I drank from."

The innkeeper nodded, and he admitted that he still grumbled now and then about the old carter who had sent him his very first guests.

Salt Between Friends

Salt and bread turn up again and again in the traveler's notebook, because in many places a shared meal makes a bond that is not lightly broken. In Persian, someone who betrays a host is described in the saying "Namak mikhorad o namakdan mishekanad", "he eats the salt and breaks the salt cellar". In Arabic people say "Baynana khubz wa milh", "there is bread and salt between us". They say it to remind a friend of the meals they have shared and of the loyalty those meals still ask for. In Russian, "Khleb vsemu golova" means "bread is the head of everything". It is said at harvest time and at family tables, and it honors both the bread itself and the long work of field, mill and oven behind every loaf.

Imagine you are invited to dinner by the family who rented you a room in a mountain village. Afterward you are not sure whether you should offer them money for the meal. "Put your purse away, please, there is bread and salt between us now," says the grandmother of the house, pressing your hand. You thank her, and on the morning you leave, you hang a small gift on her door that you bought at the market below.

What these sayings share, the traveler said, is the idea that a meal is never only food. Salt in one place, bread and salt in another, bread alone in a third: each names the plainest thing on the table, and each treats it as a promise. What differs is only the tone, sharp in the Persian saying, tender in the Arabic one, and proud in the Russian.

The innkeeper said he had always given guests the first bread of the harvest without knowing why, and now he thought perhaps he did.

The Frog and the Tadpole

Forgetting is the most common kind of ingratitude, the traveler said, and the proverbs tease it gently. In Korean there is "Gaeguri olchaengi jeok saenggak mot handa", "the frog does not remember its tadpole days". It is said, with a smile, to anyone who has done well and now forgets how hard things were at the start, and how many people helped them across. In Japanese there is the sterner phrase "On o ada de kaesu", "to repay kindness with harm", which describes the worst kind of forgetting. In Swahili, people say "Shukrani ya punda ni mateke", "the thanks of a donkey is kicks", about a favor that has been answered with ill will. The donkey takes the blame in the saying, but everybody understands who is really meant.

Imagine you are visiting the language school where you first learned a few words before your earliest journey, many years ago, and the old teacher recognizes you at once. "You speak so well now that I am sure you have forgotten all those mornings you spent crying over the verbs," says the teacher, laughing. "The frog does not forget its tadpole days, not this frog," you reply, "and I have brought you a cake to prove it."

"I was a tadpole here once myself, with one room, one table and a lantern that smoked," said the innkeeper. "The carters who stopped here in those years put up with all of it, and I ought to remember them more often than I do."

Teeth of a Gift Horse

Gratitude also has a few rules for receiving, the traveler said, and they too appear in many languages. In Spanish people say "A caballo regalado no se le mira el diente", "you do not look at the teeth of a gift horse". Horse traders judged a horse's age by its teeth. The saying therefore means that you should not inspect a gift for faults or compare it with what you might have bought. Spanish also has "Es de bien nacidos ser agradecidos", "to be grateful is the mark of the well brought up". Of all the sayings in the notebook, it comes closest to the belief that gratitude is only good manners. Yet even this saying treats thanks as something that shows what kind of person you are, not as a rule you follow when someone is watching.

In German, the saying "Undank ist der Welten Lohn" means "ingratitude is the world's reward". It is said with a sigh by someone whose help has gone unnoticed, and it is less a complaint than a way of carrying on regardless. Put next to the Spanish sayings, it shows the other side of the same table: those who give often expect nothing, and those who receive are asked, kindly, to give something back anyway.

Imagine your host at a farmhouse has given you a knitted scarf for the road, and it is bright orange, which is not a color you would ever choose. "It is a little loud, I know, but my mother made it, and the passes get cold in autumn," says your host. You put it on at once, and you thank them twice. The scarf keeps you warm all the way over the hills, and you never once think about the color again.

"Last winter a guest left me a pair of mittens with a hole in each thumb, and I nearly threw them away," said the innkeeper, a little ashamed. "After this evening I think I shall darn them and wear them when I light the lantern on frosty nights."

Forty Years of Coffee

"This one I keep for last, because it is the one I most often hear said aloud," said the traveler. In Turkish there is "Bir fincan kahvenin kırk yıl hatırı vardır", "a single cup of coffee is remembered for forty years". It means that even a small kindness, a cup of coffee offered to a stranger, creates a memory and a bond that last far longer than the coffee. People say it when they are treated to something small, and they say it again, years later, when they meet the person who treated them.

Imagine you are waiting out a long delay at a ferry port, and a woman running a small tea stall brings you a cup and will not take any money. "You have been sitting here since dawn, and nobody should wait that long without something warm," she says. "A cup of coffee is remembered for forty years, they say, so I suppose a cup of tea is good for at least thirty," you answer. She laughs and pours you a second one.

"I have poured a great many cups under this lantern," said the innkeeper, "and I never once thought that anyone might still be remembering them."

"They are," said the traveler. "I remembered yours all the way across two seas."

Heads of Ripe Rice

Last of all, the traveler read him a saying from the rice fields, which seemed right for a harvest evening. In Japanese there is "Minoru hodo kobe o tareru inaho kana", "the more the rice ripens, the lower the ear bows its head". When rice is green, the ears stand straight and light, but when they fill with grain, they bend toward the ground. People say it about anyone who becomes more humble, not less, as they grow wiser or more successful.

Imagine you are helping with the rice harvest for a day in a valley village, and you meet the owner of the largest farm in the district. He is out in the mud with everyone else, carrying sheaves on his back. "He could stay in his office and send others, but he says the field taught him everything he knows," says the young woman working beside you. "The more the rice ripens, the lower it bows its head," you reply, and she smiles and says that her mother says exactly that about him. Gratitude and humility walk together in this saying, because a person who remembers how much they were given does not stand quite so tall.

Words Before a Meal

The traveler told the innkeeper that in Japanese homes people say "itadakimasu" before a meal, a polite word meaning "I humbly receive". After the meal they say "gochisosama deshita", and that phrase holds a small story. The old word inside it, "chiso", once meant running about, so the thanks go to everyone who rushed here and there to gather the food and prepare it. Many languages have a word for the start of a meal. This pair thanks both the food and the work, and it is said even when you have cooked the meal yourself.

A Note to an Old Host

Here is a small thing to try on your next quiet evening, at home or on the road. Think of one person who helped you on an earlier journey. It might be a driver who waited for you, a host who lent you a coat, or a stranger who walked you to the right platform. Write down what they did on a postcard, even if you no longer have their address, and keep it in the back of your notebook. If you ever pass that way again, you will have your thanks ready. If you never do, you will at least have remembered the source of the water.

Apples Beside the Lantern

It had grown dark while they talked, and the wind from the hills carried the smell of cut fields and woodsmoke across the crossroads. The lantern burned warm and gold above the door, and the light fell on the baskets of apples they had not yet carried inside.

"Then I shall go down the valley on Sunday and thank him properly, and his father's field too, if he will show it to me," said the innkeeper. He took one more apple from the basket, and instead of eating it, he set it on the far end of the bench, where nobody was sitting.

"The old miller from below the hill used to sit there almost every evening, right under the lantern, and at every harvest he took the first apple," he said quietly. "This is the first autumn he has not come."

The traveler said nothing, and the two of them sat for a long time beside the empty end of the bench, while the lantern's light lay on the single red apple.