My apologies for a late entry…. sometimes a break in routine really makes getting back into that routine a bear! However, here I am at my laptop ready to write. I have been thinking a lot lately about what things we are able to release and part with as well as those things we are destined and driven to hold onto forever. I am a sentimentalist in the highest degree. I have in my possession things which were a part of my family for generations. They are very dear to me have in turn become special to my children. These books, letters, pictures, bracelets, chairs ….. I cannot imagine ever placing in a garage sale.
Certain memories and dreams are also impossible to put into storage. I bring some of them out over and over again and they always seem brand new. The more often they are retrieved, the more ragged, worn and loved they become- like an old teddy bear. There have been some moments in my life that I am able to put away forever- and I am so very grateful to my heart for allowing me to do so. Those memories will be replaced by new ones and the process goes on.
My recipes are quite the same. I have some that have been in my family for many many years and enjoyed so many times that I don’t even have to look at the writing or measurements yet I cannot part with the actual card or piece of paper that it is on. I will most likely never ever part with those recipes. Handwritten and fragile- they will remain.
I have let go of some of my old ways though as gadgets seem to be entering my drawers in the kitchen. I am not a gadget person- choppers, blenders, food processors and all the many many scores of inventions to make life easier have yet to make mine so. Yet, as I feel a bit more arthritis in my hands and feel that ache a bit more in the small of my back after a long day of standing and cooking- some of those gadgets have been added to my arsenal of cooking utensils. I have given up doing this the “traditional” way (or as some of my employees have said- the “hard way”.) An easy seperation.
So, as I think of things to which I have been able to nod farewell and things to which I will never bid au revoir- I am content. I can keep my I love Lucy tapes, keep my Mom’s macaroni and cheese recipe, keep my shoeboxes of old letters and my seventh and eight grade diaries. I can give away one more cutting board for a mini-chopper, give away the clothes that I wore while writing in that eighth grade diary, and pack up those 8 tracks to plug in my ipod.
I can handle moving forward as long as I have one foot in the past. After all-having the best of both worlds has always sounded really good to me!!
