what do you see?

Once a while back ago, one weekend, a little girl went to visit her grand parents with her mother. Like most visits, it was not very interesting for the little girl. Her mother and grand mother would usually sit around the kitchen table drinking tea and talk. This particular day, the little girl stole away looking for something to do. When she noticed a kitten by the barn door. Like most little girls, she went over to pick it up.

While walking over, she walked in front of the barn door, where she happened to look in, and noticed her grand father sitting before a lump of mud. Being of a curious nature, she walked over where she too looked at the lump. With out turning his head, her grandfather asked. “What do you see?” the little girl being very good at seeing things, was a little confused, looking around trying to see what her grand father was taking about, then decided that it must be the mud in front of him answered, “A lump of Mud”. Chuckling, the grand father spoke again. “What do you see when you look at the clay,?” Nodding to the lump of mud the little girl was still staring.

The girl again answered, “A lump of clay!”

The grand father now smiling, spoke again. However instead of asking the same question like he did before, he asked something else. “What do you see if you could make the lump into anything you want?”

Instead of answering right away, the little girl stared at the clay. As she peered into the gray lump, her mind began to see different things. Then she imagined music like the what she and her parents listened to the previous weekend. Then she remembered the Beautiful Ballet Dancer, who danced so gracefully to while the music played. Then she saw it, “I see a Ballet Dancer like the one Mommy, Daddy and me saw last weekend.”

The Grand father smiled as he looked at his grand daughter. Then he spoke, “Go back to the house, I have some work to do.” With that he shooed her out of the barn grunting he turned to the clay lump. The little girl went back into the house, her mother and grand mother were in the process of cleaning off the table. Not long after that, the little girl and her mother left for home.

It was a couple of weeks, before the little girl and mother came back visit her grand parents. When they arrived, instead of Grand Pa, being some where else doing something, there he was smiling at her when she walked into the house. He was holding a box that looked small in his large hands. The little girl, her curiosity aroused, asked, what is the that? The grand father grinned, then said, “Child do you remember the lump of mud I had before me the last time you visited?” The little girl nodded. “This is what it has turned into.” The girl took the box and placing it on the table lifted the lid, There, inside wrapped in tissue paper, was a Beautiful Ballet Dancer, just like the one she and her Mommy and Daddy saw dancing all those weeks ago.

The girl, now a grown woman, looked over and smiled at the tiny dancer, who stood in the window by her work bench. Thinking back at the gift her grand father gave her that weekend. The dancer was certainly a beautiful piece of work, however, that wasn’t it. Now when she looks at clay she imagines her Grand Father sitting next to her, asking,” What do you see if you could make the lump into anything you want?”