my Grandma Myrl, baker extraordinaire
and 4-foot-nothing giant of my best childhood memories
Some things are important and some things aren't. The trick is distinguishing between the two. Unfortunately, I fear that I'm not always good at recognizing the difference. Maybe that's why the universe has taken it upon herself to school me a bit as of late. At least I'm learning.
First, we got the bright idea of cutting the size of our home in half. I know, sounds good on paper, looks admirable from a distance, feels lighter in the wallet, BUT -- it also means that, as a result, we've been required to sift through and discard entire decades of our family life. There's just not room for 30 years in 1900 sq. feet...you have to make choices, and that means moving in with your memories but not with the actual souvenirs of the times you spent making them. Put that in the "easier said than done" file...which is why we still have a storage unit roughly the size of our garage packed to the rafters. These things don't sort themselves overnight. Or even in eight months. But I'm happy to report that progress has been made. Take Grandma Myrl's canister set, for instance...
Grandma Myrl's canisters were just wonderful. They sat on her kitchen counter dispensing magic for all of the years I was lucky enough to know her. She kept a chipped teacup in the largest one for dipping out flour, which was not exactly measuring per se, but was somehow infallible. They were tins, in graduated sizes, with dented red lids and a nifty 50's apple motif. The day I inherited them, I remember thinking, SCORE! Hard as it was to believe she was gone, it was equally hard to believe that her magic might live on in my own newly-established kitchen. I loved that canister set.
Of course houses change, needs change, climates change...I soon came to value more room on my countertops for storing piles of school papers and art projects than baking supplies. I also moved to places where tupperware was just more useful than tin. And owning the canisters never seemed to mean for a moment that I could bake like Grandma Myrl. So they eventually moved into the decorative tin collection atop my kitchen cabinets, keeping company with things like the baking soda tin from Grant's Emporium, my great grandfather's legendary but burned-to-the-ground-before-I-was-born store, and Aunt Lillie's turn-of-the-century (the last one) marshmallow tin, used in my lifetime only for storing cookies in the back room. Some days I would look up and see them and sigh or smile...but most days when I did bother to notice them, I would dread their annual cleaning and wonder crankily how so much greasy grime could get on top of kitchen cabinets.
This is how the beloved canister set came, along with all her tin sisters, to inhabit one of the hundred boxes I opened after our move that made me roll my eyes and feel a little sick. My new house has no space above the kitchen cabinets. And not only that, I just spent $5000.00 on new countertops for the first time in my life, and my dented greasy old tins are not really the look I was envisioning in my perfect new 1900 sq foot life. So they moved into the garage so I could wring my hands for awhile longer.
I could not send Grandma Myrl's canisters to Goodwill. That would somehow be wrong. But none of my daughters knew Grandma Myrl, nor did they have homes or space or interest in vintage tins. As temperatures climbed further into the 100's, it became apparent that I was going to have to make some hard decisions if I ever wanted to get a car in the garage. So I did. I could almost hear my friend Pam, the antiques dealer, wailing in sadness and disgust that I wasn't going to at least give her a chance at the good stuff before I tossed it, but she lives there and I live here and it was time to get down to what's important in my life now. A parking spot in the shade. So I scheduled an evening where I could invite my nieces to come for dinner and shop at my free garage sale. I put out all the things I couldn't bear to send to Goodwill, for one dumb reason or another, and let them take whatever interested them. And I began to feel better the moment the evening started...lighter...better than I had felt in months. In fact, I was elated! It was almost criminal to feel so good. Because the decision to let go was the hard part. Watching them actually cart the stuff away was easy as pie.
And there hasn't been a single second of regret. I still have exactly the same memories of Grandma Myrl standing at her kitchen counter as I had before. I just don't have those memories in a box taking up space in my garage. And in Phoenix, that's important. So lesson learned. Let's hope it holds as I take on the boxes still in storage.
Next, Ms. Fate deemed me to be due for a lesson about what's important beyond the world of decorative kitchen accessories, even the most sentimental ones. She sent me on a two month, no-expenses-paid roller coaster ride with cancer. The "C" word. Yes, that one -- the one that other people sometimes deal with while I just do things like take in casseroles. Every second of the journey has been excruciating. Waiting, not knowing, more waiting, knowing even less, or sometimes knowing much more than you wish you did.
There has been a lot more hand-wringing, all the while realizing with ever greater clarity that of course canister sets are meaningless in the big picture. Also a re-evaluation of life goals. Moments of sheer panic about the prospect of what-ifs like losing my already challenged hair. A 50th birthday, to heighten the angst. And also about a million blessings as friends and family and even near-strangers have rallied around me to prop me up and carry me through. And two months later, the surgery is behind me and the final word still isn't in yet. Not only that, but I have a strong suspicion that I'm going to be watching cancer over my shoulder and out of the corner of my eye for the rest of my life. But it doesn't really matter. Because I also know some important things in more intimate ways.
I know that bad things happen, but also that we are stronger than we think we are, and that there's no time like the present for doing anything we really want to do and in fact, we should have been doing those things all along. Procrastination shows a deplorable lack of gratitude. I know that modern medicine is miraculous, and a good surgeon can become your best friend overnight. Also that caring nurses have automatically earned a place in heaven, and we should all strive to be more like them. (One of them kissed my forehead, and she wasn't even my nurse.) I know that some days the most important thing might be reading a discussion of the pros and cons of enemas vs. suppositories following hysterectomy surgery, and that I am blessed beyond measure to live in a time and place where it is possible to Google something so inane and have an entire world of information and support at my fingertips. I know that prayer works, no matter who utters it, because the simple act of exercising faith, hope and love on behalf of another always makes a difference. I also know the true meaning of the word friend, and that going forward I vow to be a more thoughtful one. Because even the smallest gestures become magnified in their impact by a needy recipient. But mostly, I know that life is truly a gift that comes with no guarantee. The only thing we should count on is being surprised.
And I know that someday -- who knows when? and there's the real aha -- my kids will thank me for going through all this stuff and getting rid of it so they don't have to find themselves completely overwhelmed in my garage, worrying about their own kids but also stressed and sad wondering what to do with a dented canister set that they don't remember a thing about except being made to help scrub the grime off it once a year.
Important stuff. Now...can I be done learning for awhile?