A note about the work “The Ant and the Grasshopper” from Hema Padhu for the Michigan Quarterly Review's Winter 2025 Issue: One of my favorite short stories is Trevor William’s A Choice of Butchers, and to some extent, his story inspired me to write this one. I’m drawn to children’s perspectives. I think adults don’t give them enough credit for what they see and understand. A child’s perspective, however, is limited, so I wanted to take this story into Divya’s adulthood to give the narrator some retrospective understanding of her mother’s decision. I love short stories that work with time. It can give a story an expansive, novelistic feel. I wanted to play with time here to trace the life trajectory of these two very different women. The struggles of one generation inevitably echo in the choices made by the next. In both Divya and Selvi’s lives, some choices were made consciously, some they had no control over, but throughout the story, both stay true to their nature. I did not want a big epiphany ending. Life rarely works that way.