“My mother even ironed Christmas ribbons - they were rayon then. I grew up in the forties and fifties with a practical parent – my mother, who ironed Christmas wrapping paper and reused it and who washed aluminum foil after she cooked in it, then reused it.
“She was the original recycle queen, before they had a name for it. It was the time for fixing things --- a curtain rod, the kitchen radio, screen door, the oven door, the hem in a dress. Things we keep.
“It was a way of life, and sometimes it made me crazy. All that re-fixing, reheating, renewing, I wanted just once to be wasteful. Waste meant affluence. Throwing things away meant you knew there would always be more.
“But then my mother died, and I sat in my kitchen that Sunday afternoon reading her old handmade cookbook in a binder. I was struck with the pain of feeling all alone, learning that sometimes there isn’t any ‘more’. Sometimes, what we care about most gets all used up and goes away, never to return.
“So while we have it, it’s best we love it, care for it, fix it when it’s broken, and heal it when it’s sick. This is true for marriages and old cars and children with bad report cards; dogs with bad hips, aging parents and grandparents and blended families. We keep them because they are worth it, because we are worth it.
“Some things we keep. Like a best friend that moved away or a classmate we grew up with. There are just some things that make life important, like people we know who are special... and so, we keep them close!
“Keep what is worth keeping and with a breath of kindness blow the rest away.”
author unknown
from a Simply, Gail column
http://www.desertsaintsmagazine.com/magazine_articles/Oct2004/DSM%20October%2004.pdf
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