Remember Soup

Hello~ 

Today we are swimming at the center of July.  It often seems that after the 4th, bing-bang-boom, “back to school” ads appear and we might as well toss the calendar into the garbage because we are all ready looking for the end of summer.  Why can’t we just “cool it” a bit?  Why can’t we simply say “stop, let’s go fishing instead?”

I realize a person can’t freeze time but the older I grow the more it seems as if we are living in a constant state of “I can’t wait until tomorrow.”  If we don’t make the best of today, why are we so set on tomorrow anyway?

Sometimes even, yesterday is a great place to visit.  This past week I’ve been thinking a lot about yesterday especially in the story that I’m editing surrounding the Oregon Trail and the main characters traveling to California during the gold rush.  Although it isn’t my past exactly, (I’m not older than the hills at 175 or better, thank you very much), it’s still a wonderful opportunity to better understand the human condition and the similarities in what we face regardless of how many years have passed.  The happy, sad, celebrations, love, illnesses….the feelings within are all the same regardless of time.  Sure the slang is different, the clothes, the style, but the inner workings of us as people, seems to remain as a constant.

Over the past week, I had a conversation with my sister-in-law K.  Unfortunately, K is not someone I get along very easily with.  I often find myself biting my tongue and trying to control an enormous frustration.  It isn’t that K is such a bad person; I think it has more to do with the fact that her code of life does not match mine.  I am extremely sentimental.  I hold people and feelings above all else.  I lean towards the positive and take many pictures along the way so as to always remember.  I enjoy music, which in many ways is a tool to help conjure the better days.  K does not.  She sees everything as clutter!  Organize, destroy, put on a stiff upper lip; move on…things must be mapped just so, “get out of my way.”

My mom turned 92 this week.  That in itself is amazing!  She still is healthy, wise and sharp…someone I definitely hope to emulate.  The thing is, K was over to my mom’s and took it upon herself to “organize” my mother's recipes.  My mom had this amazing collection that stemmed back to recipe’s collected in her mom’s handwriting and my grandma was born in the 1880’s, so…  Can you imagine?

That recipe book was rich in history.  It carried notes from when my brother was young and needed mom to awaken him at a certain time.  It held a card I made my mom when I was in the 5th grade, just because.  It was more than a book of recipes, it was a great treasure.  So when K bragged on the phone how she went through my mom’s recipe book to rid the clutter, I hit the roof!  It was our family time capsule and she set herself to destroy.

I (with steam coming out of my ears) asked her how she could possibly do such a thing?  How she could make that decision to dismantle something that was of such great value to our family heritage?  Her answer to me is that I would thank her someday when we (the seven of us) didn’t have to go through any of that after mom passes away.  You see my sister-in-law has been methodically cleaning out my mom’s house in preparation for her funeral ever since my dad passed away several years ago.  She has never stopped to think that maybe if and when that time arrives that our family will need to feel, that we will want to remember…that our past is ours to hold onto however we see fit.

I simply struggle to understand the logic of some people…and the boldness, the heartlessness, and motivation…  I would never in a million years overstep in such a way.  Years ago when I had an elderly mother-in-law I would have never taken it upon myself to do such a thing.  I respected her, her life past, her world in the present and all she had to live in the days ahead.  To me, it’s just common sense…and not overstepping boundaries.

A simple recipe book, no…it was much more than that, as is mine.  It is my hope that someday as my son and daughter are going through the cards they will happen upon the little note from our neighbors many years ago, offering me instructions on babysitting their son or the tiny picture of the rabbit that my daughter drew on the back of my peanut butter cookie recipe.  There are cards in there from co-workers for pizza dough, rum balls, and angel hair pasta.  The recipes go far beyond food, they are the heart of our past and it all lives on every time we open our talents to prepare something from before…and oh do the flavors of “remember” spark alive!   1900, 1966, 1928, 1988…the past is all ours for the cooking.