When I hid in the dark room with rice crackers

(This story is a continuation from the previous post “A diary entry.”)

Here is another story I found in my mother’s diary that recorded the time when I was around three. One day, my mother invited a few friends of mine and their mothers to our apartment. In the tiny living room, she served tea and offered snacks in big bowls for the guests while we children played in the next room.

In the evening, after everybody went home, my mother had cleared up the table and was about to prepare supper when she noticed that I was being very quiet. It seemed that I was in the tiniest room of our tiny apartment, which was mostly used as a storage space.

“Sweetie? What are you doing in there? Are you alright?”

In response to her, I poked out my head from the room and replied,

“I’m sad because they are all gone!”

My mother thought that it was reasonable for me to feel that way, so she didn’t implore further.

Shortly afterwards, she needed to get something from the tiny storage room. As she walked in and switched on the light, however, her thought totally flew away.

“Sweetie, what are you doing there!”

There I was, far back in the room in front of the window, happily laying out several packages of rice crackers on the windowsill. I must have taken them from the large snack bowl earlier that afternoon with the plan of eating them afterwards.

Hearing my mother’s upset voice, my happy mood was quickly replaced by a crying face.

“I’m sorry, Mommy, I won’t do it again!”

In the diary, my mother wrote, in a rather serious tone, if she had been too strict with me and if that had made me feel I had to hide from her even to eat my snacks.

Upon finishing reading the diary entry, I thought that my mother was being a little too dramatic. I don’t think I was experiencing any emotional crisis at the time. But there was a background as to why this event might have taken place.

My mother had a strict rule about my snacking and was very careful to give me only a small amount each day out of concern for my health. On the other hand, from the birth, I was somebody who was extremely interested in eating. I was chronically dissatisfied by the quantity of my daily snack. So, when I saw large bowls of snacks for the guests, I naturally thought why not keep some of them to myself so that I could eat them later when I wanted. I was thinking like a squirrel before the winter season.