“Then who are all those beans for?”
Brent smiled, knelt to the child’s height, and answered with the same two words my father had spoken years earlier.
“People.”
The child looked surprised.
“People like us?”
“Exactly like you.”
Brent pointed toward the first row.
“Beans are on the left. Pick the ones near the bottom first.”
As the boy hurried into the garden, I looked toward my father.
He was kneeling among his beloved bean plants, smiling quietly.
For decades, my parents had believed kindness should be passed from one person to another, without recognition or reward.
Now the neighbor who once wanted to destroy their garden was helping it flourish.
And I finally understood why my father had never bothered explaining whom all those beans were for.
He wasn’t growing food to prove how much he could give. He was growing it because he remembered what it felt like to have nothing—and he never wanted anyone else to feel that way alone.
