5/19/23 - Friday Forget-Me-Nots by Jim Silcott

Photo Caption: OLP Alumni, Class of 2019, who are graduating from high school this month.

Dear Our Lady of Peace Family,

An old Albanian Folk Tale

Once upon a time in a remote village far, far away lived a little old man. The man lived alone. He had no wife or family. He was a quiet old man. When he spoke, he did so in a whisper. When he walked, he did so slowly. His shoulders were stooped, and his long, white beard seemed to pull his head down so far that it seemed he would fall over.

He had lived in the village for as long as the oldest residents could imagine. Some of them remembered him when they were children, and, remarkably, at least from their perspective, they always remembered him as the old man with the stooped shoulders and the long beard.

Daily, the old man would walk through the village with a satchel across his stooped right shoulder. He would stop at each house in the village and knock on the door. If someone was at home, the old man would reach into his bag and pull out a potato which he would place in his neighbor’s hands. The old man would smile through his beard, wish the resident a good day and move onto the next home. If no one answered his knock, he would gently place the potato in front of the door.

Now the village had suffered for many years with drought and famine. The people who lived there were poor. The daily gift of that lone potato was a wonderful, sometimes life-saving gift to them. They were grateful to the old man. Sometimes they would ask him into their homes or inquire about his health. The old man would simply smile, wish them a good day, and move on.

One day, a group of villagers were sitting in the local tavern. After a drink or two or three the old man and his daily deliveries became the topic of conversation. “Who is this man,” one of them asked. “Where does he get the potatoes,” inquired another. “I have been by his home. Why, he doesn’t even have a garden,” stated the third. Then they began to speculate. “Perhaps he is a wizard of some sorts.” “Perhaps he is a demon.” “How do we know that these potatoes are even safe to eat?”

The woman who tended the bar in the tavern spoke above the murmur and conversation. “Why you, dunderheads,” she shouted. “You have been taking his simple gift every day. You have boiled it and divided it amongst your family. It has often nourished you when there little else to eat. Be grateful to this old man!”

“But how can he trust him? We know nothing about him or where these potatoes come from,” shouted one who was particularly agitated and drunk. Many in the tavern shouted in assent. The more they talked the more unnerved they became about the old man and what his true aims were by delivering a potato every day to each of them.

Suddenly, as if the group were but a single body with a single mind, they rose from their stools determined to march to the old man’s home and demand answers from him. The woman at the bar did her best to dissuade them from this foolish errand but they were already rushing out the door with threats and bravado and determination to know all there was to know.

It was a small village. It did not take them long to arrive at the old man’s humble home. They knocked on the door, and when no one opened it for them they knocked down the door. Once inside they saw a meagre bit of furniture, a hearth containing a few dying embers, a neatly made wooden bed with a mattress of straw, and nothing else. There was no old man, there were no potatoes. They then searched the property for a root cellar. There was none. In their frustration and anger, they burned the old man’s house to the ground.

The old man and his satchel full of potatoes were never seen again. They were angry with the old man and, on mention of him, would often spit on the ground and curse him because they had relied on that potato and were mad that what they had expected as regularly as the morning sun, no longer came. It never occurred to any of them to be angry with themselves. They had a right to know, and now not only did they not have the potato, they had no answers.



Some months later a visitor to their village told them that he had heard about a small town on the other side of the mountain where there was a report of an old man with a white beard who was bringing food to every home. There was talk of traveling there to see if it was the same old man, their old man, but the journey was too long, and many of them were too weak from hunger to even try.

Jim Silcott