I got this in an e-mail, and it touched home with me!! We are a throw away society!! I can remember saving aluminum foil, brown paper lunch sacks, dad making our bedroom furniture out of wooden fruit crates, mom making skirts out of old robes, (Mary Lou remembers one), curtains out of old sheets, then skirts out of old curtains, (she never made the button holes, and therefore we had to use safety pins to hold the skirts up. I can remember sometimes the safety pins would pop open and poke me in my waist !!! OUCH!!
" I grew up in the fifties with practical parents -- a Mother, God love her, 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...) A Father who was happier getting old shoes fixed than buying new ones.......Their marriage was good, their dreams focused. Their best friends lived barely a wave away.
I can see them now, Dad in trousers, tee shirt and a hat and Mom in a house dress, lawn mower in one hand, dishtowel in the other. 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 there'd always be more.
But then my Mother died, and on that clear summer's night, in the warmth of the hospital room, I was struck with the pain of 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....... and care for it........and fix it when it's broken....... and heal it when it's sick. This is true....for marriage....and old cars.....and children with bad report cards..and dogs with bad hips.....and aging parents.....and grandparents. 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! " Like our new Blogging friends!!
Time to get ready for my big birthday dinner date with my sis!!
