Shaking Seeds Off Sesame Plants with My Grandma

I went to my grandma’s during the harvest season. Usually I leave early for the next day’s work, but that day, I decided to help her shake seeds off sesame plants and leave later.

As soon as I reached the sesame field, crossing the persimmon field where ripe persimmon fell here and there, I knew the work would be more than I had expected. At the field on hillside, sesame plants were tied in sheaves like children standing in a row at a playground.

“Grandma, are we supposed to shake all these seeds off?”

“We can’t finish them all today. We’ll just do as much as we can until sunset.”

Since I came to help, I couldn’t stand there idly. Hiding my anxiousness, I began to move the sheaves. I brought the sheaves of sesame from the field to the threshing ground, and distributed them in good amounts. Then, my grandma showed me how to shake seeds off the plants. As if hitting a pile of laundry with a laundry bat, she hit the end of the sesame sheaves many times with a bat, shook them off, and then hit them again. As I hit three or four sheaves, my arms began to ache.

‘When can I finish all these sheaves in this vast field with this bat?’ However, there was no choice but to keep hitting.

Grandma looked at me with a smile on her face. I couldn’t let her down. I stopped grumbling and focused on beating the sesame seeds off the plants.

I beat them hard and my arms hurt, but the seeds that fell were very few. I was upset as the seeds didn’t come as much as I used my strength, and also thought of people in the old days, who did the farm work in that way, and imagined how it must’ve been hard for them. I grumbled why the sun was still in the sky even though the field was surrounded by mountains. While all sorts of things were crossing my mind, my arms hurt even more. I simply repeated hitting like a robot.

Grandma laid the sheaves of sesame at a corner of the threshing ground and spread them in a circle. Then she took a strange-looking rod. It consisted of a long wooden handle and a shorter, free-swinging stick attached to its end. It was a flail that I had only heard of. When she beat the sheaves of sesame by swinging the stick, its seeds poured down to the ground.

Swish—thud—pitter-patter-pitter-patter.

The sound of her flailing echoed in the whole mountain and fields. With a stable position, she kept beating the seeds off the sheaves. Who would believe that she turned eighty next month? Although she said her knees and back hurt, I saw the expert of flailing in her posture. She had done the same work for decades. She couldn’t stop the farm work even though my father urged her to stop; because giving her children a bottle of sesame oil made of sesame seeds she harvested was her great joy.

When the shadows became long, we gathered the sesame seeds scattered all around and put them into a bag. Every seed looked so precious. After picking out twigs and chips, sifting, removing bugs, and blowing away empty seeds which turned out to be the half of all seeds, the pile of sesame seeds as big as a man’s head shrank.

When I saw the bag of sesame seeds after all the hard work, I felt like crying. All I got after hard work for half a day was just one bag! One bottle that my mom used while cooking was a product of such a great work. I keenly felt that nothing is free in the world except parents’ love towards their children.

While shaking seeds off the sesame plants with my grandma, I realized something important: I must’ve been of little help as it was my first time to grab a sheaf of sesame and hit the sheaves, but my grandma was pleased with me and she herself took on all the tough work. It was the same with my path in the truth. I’m an immature child; I don’t know what a tough life is or what it really means to sacrifice myself. I merely mimic Heavenly Mother in a childish way, but She watches over me with smiles and does all the hard work Herself.

On the way back home, leaving behind the autumn field unseen after sunset and filling my heart with abounding love, I was determined to pay back Heavenly Mother with my action, always thinking what I should do to ease Her pain.