In the old days it was like this: when a father gets old, his son will take him to a remote forest and abandon him there...
One day, the son took his father to Pushcha. He feels sorry for his father - he loved him very much, but what can you do! If you're unlucky, people will laugh, they'll say old customs don't hold up. They will also drive you out of the village...
He rides sadly, and his father says to him:
- Are you really going to leave me, old and sick, alone in the forest, son?
The son thought, wiped away a tear and said:
- No, dad, I won’t give up. But at least we need to do this for the people. At night I will come for you and I will keep you in a dark closet until your death, so that no one can see.
That's what the son did.
When night fell, he brought his father from the forest and hid him in a dark closet.
But a misfortune happened - the hail destroyed everything, and there was nothing new to sow.
A son came to his father in a dark closet and complained:
- What should I do? If we don’t sow crops, we’ll be left without bread next year. Father says:
- No, son, as long as I live, we will not be without bread. Listen to me. When you were still little, I built a threshing floor. And there was a big harvest that year. So I covered the threshing floor with unthreshed grain. Take off the eaves, thresh it, and you will have grain to sow.
The son did just that. He removed the eaves from the threshing floor, threshed it and sowed it in the fall.
The neighbors marvel: where did he get the grain from? But the son is silent, because it’s impossible to admit that it was the old father who helped him.
Winter has come. There's nothing to eat. Again the son goes to his father in a dark closet.
- So, they say, and so. - he says, - you will have to die of hunger...
“No,” says the father, “we will not die of hunger.” Listen to what I tell you. Take a shovel and dig around in the hut under the bench. There, when I was still young, I buried some money for a rainy day. Life, son, to live is not a field to cross: anything can happen. That's what I thought and that's what I did.
The son was delighted, dug up his father’s money and bought grain.
And he eats with his family and also borrows money for the neighbors. So they ask him:
- Tell us, brother, where do you get your bread from? The son admitted:
“Father,” he says, “feeds me.”
- How so? - the neighbors are amazed. “You took your father to the forest, like all good sons!”
“No,” says the son, “I didn’t do what you do, but left my father to live out his life.” But when trouble came, my father helped me. Old people have more intelligence than young people.
From that time on, the sons of their fathers stopped taking them to the Pushcha, but began to respect and feed them in their old age.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru