One summer, when I was about eight, my maternal grandmother came to visit us for several days. During her stay, my mother took her out to the city centre for some special shopping and I accompanied them. Shopping together was one of their favourite activities. Since neither of them was a big shopper, going for a shopping together made it really feel like a very special occasion for them. Or at least I thought that.
After shopping for some time, we all felt tired and hot and decided to go to a food court inside the shopping centre to grab something cold. My grandmother was very fond of snow cones, and she and my mother ordered snow cones while I had an ice cream.
The three of us sat at a table and ate our treats. My mother and grandmother chatted about different people in their lives and how they were doing, and I focused on my ice cream, savouring each bite like a treasure.
My mother and grandmother kept talking even after they finished their snow cones. As I stared at the two empty plastic containers, an animal emerged in front of me. It was a crab. The more I stared at the empty containers, the more they looked like the body of a crab.
“Shall we go now?”
My mother’s voice rang next to me. My heart was filled with excitement.
“Can I take your empty containers? I have something I want to make out of them!”
Both my mother and grandmother were surprised upon hearing my request, but they washed them and handed them to me.
As soon as we got home, I took my scissors and some cardboards papers along with the two empty snow cone containers and got to work on my craft. I was so eager to bring to life the crab I visualized at the food court that I didn’t even realize the time passing.
When it was complete, I ran to the next room and showed my crab to my mother and grandmother.
“Oh, my…!”
They both closed their mouths and looked at the crab with amazement.
“What an amazing thing you made out of that empty container!”
In front of my happy face, they laughed and admired the crab for a long time. The story of my crab was recounted many times in my family since then.