Educating My Son

I always told my son not to listen to his mother.

"If you want to develop rational thinking, listen to what I say," I wagged a finger at his face and told him.

He looked at me from his 10-year-old height and nodded.

The same evening, I found the mother and the son seated in our balcony, pointing at mushrooms and discussing which frog's umbrella it was.

"Do you want him to be trapped by superstitions like you are? This is the age of science and what are you filling his head with?" I wagged my newspaper at her. She kept the teacup on the centre table and left without looking at me.

Twenty years later, my son is now a rational man who believes in nothing, not even God, without proof. It was my education that made him the man he became, but still, whenever he comes home, like a ritual, an old mother and an adult son sit in the balcony and discuss the frog's umbrellas while an old man sits with his newspaper, waiting for the teacup to arrive.