An Eggcutter (vs a Writer)

I know Khalil Gibran once said that: “Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself”. But, I can not help myself but to wish for my daughter to follow my long time dream, to be a writer. I want her to be like Orhan Pamuk, whose novels are very compelling, telling a story about a dog, from dog’s point of view, or a gold coin, from coin’s point of view, with his deep meditation about life.

And in my biased view, of course, she has all the potential to do it. And she has all the means to do it. I buy her many books to increase her creativity and her love for books: Roald Dahl is clearly her favourite, especially the BFG, the Big Friendly Giant, Tintin and Asterix, C.S. Lewis’s Narnia, Hunter’s warrior cats. I also took her to the place where Miss Potter lived in Lake District or even went to Bath to visit the Jane Austen Centre, just to persuade her.

It is no surprise that she clearly enjoys reading books. In fact, she has now been following me in the way she reads the book. She will lie down in bed and turn on the reading lamp next to the bed. Sometimes we sit together in my bed, and she insists to sit closer to the lamp. When she gets excited about the story, she will read it out loud, disturbing my reading, so I say: “Ssshhhh!”. And she will then say: “OK, I’ll go to my room”. But her room is just next door, so clearly I could still hear her excitements. Well, at least my plan is on its way. She clearly enjoys reading books.

One night, I asked her about what she would like to be when she grows up. She did not answer. So, again, I persuaded her that a writer like Roald Dahl is surely a very interesting idea. I reminded her how she enjoys seeing movies like Matilda or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. She did not answer.

The following morning, I prepared her lunch meal for school. I made her favourite sandwich, with egg and cheese inside two slices of bread. It’s very easy, so I didn’t need my wife to help me. Just cut the bread skin off as my daughter hated the skin, put some butter, boil the egg, and put the well-done egg into the egg cutter and cut the egg into slices. Then, put the egg slices into the bread and add one cheese slice. Hmm, it looked so yummy. So, I decided to make some more egg sandwiches for us.

My daughter loves to help me cutting the egg. So, every time she’ll have an egg sandwich, she makes sure she’ll do the cutting. She pushes the strings slowly as she really enjoys the moment when the strings of cutter touches the egg and the round egg turns to be slices.

So, after finishing her little help, she told me excitedly: “Daddy, I know what I want to be when I grow up. An Egg Cutter! Yes, I want to be an egg cutter!”.