I often think the difference between my childhood and my kid’s is how close I was to the sources of production versus how distant those experiences are for them. As a kid holding a bowl of rice, I thought of my grandparents kneeling in the rice paddies, not the grocery store. Holding a plastic toy, I pictured the injection molding machine running day and night at the shop across the street, not Toys “R” Us. We collected still-hot defective parts straight from the molds as toys. Cooking chicken thighs, I recalled how long it took Grandma to slaughter and clean them, not Costco packaging. Holding a glass bottle, I thought of the old man on the corner recycling them on his tricycle back to the factory. Production happened around us; we saw the effort required to get things to the table. That closeness bred gratitude for food, clothes, and shoes because they were tied to people we knew.