How many times have you stood watching the oven door, waiting for the biscuits, the brownies or some other baked treat to spring back when touched, come clean from a forking or turn magic golden brown? How many times have you waited patiently only to find out that you’ve used ancient baking powder? You've made Flop-jacks pancake mix that is with past the "sell by date”? How often have you opened a can of soup and passed out from the fumes? Or worse yet, taken a bite of a microwave meal that tasted like glue soaked in dishwater? Knowing how long to keep things is just as important as knowing what ingredients to put in them.
I know people who never throw anything away. From the bag lady pushing the cart to the elderly couple who collect donations for the church, they are hoarders. They have cupboards full of rusting cans and exploding bottles. They hoard because they don't know what has value and so they keep it all. They keep garbage and even keep other peoples garbage. They keep totems of other people's lives, of their joys and tragedy, as though they can suck the spirit from them. And even when things have lost all usefulness, when holding on does more harm than good, they keep cupboards full of old heartache and a pantry full of poisonous pain.
You must tread lightly in these kitchens. One wrong word shakes the old nitro glycerin and body parts litter the room. You will spend decades cleaning the DNA from the countertops. At first I railed at the cook for keeping such explosives in her home. But I soon realized that she was not keeping them, they were keeping her. She was but a hostage to ancient pain. These things she mistook for nourishment and potions to ease her suffering were not explosives when she brought them home. They turned deadly in the dark and secret places on the back of the shelf. Having been burned once or twice, the cook never looks in those places and has no explanation for the foul smell. She simply adds more paprika and chili pepper to the stew and continues to damn the grocery and the food deserts. You can lecture her all day long on the benefits of a good cleaning but she can’t hear you. She can’t throw things away until she remembers where they came from and why she took them to her heart. Only then can she stop the hording pain and cooking with poison.
Me, I’m a keeper of leftover pieces and the savior of missing parts to unknown gadgets. I have an entire section of the tool chest devoted to “orphaned parts”. I have a ton of black plastic thing-a-ma-jigs and whatchamacallits. I have wheels, levers, buttons and handles. In my bedroom closet I have a collection of single socks, one earrings, one shoes and one gloves. I feel it is my mission in life to reconnect these things and help them find their birth mother. I rarely do. Instead I use the remote control that has duct tape on the back while the cover lies helplessly in the tool box. I wear the one black leather glove on one hand and let the other hand go cold. It would be disloyal to buy a whole new pair.
Knowing what to keep and when to let go is a life long lesson. At sixty I’m still waiting for the orphans, the prodigals to come home. I will keep the spare parts on the shelf waiting for a chance to be of use.
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