August 7, 2023
Greetings from the insignificantly significant,
I have developed a new skill. Not exactly the kind of thing I’ll be remembered for, except by a few select people and only for a very short time. In fact I’d be surprised if I remember any of this a week from now.
My new skill is finishing things off. Before you jump to conclusions, I don’t mean to say I am finishing all those things I said I would do. The list of repairs and improvements for the house, those books I was going to read, the kayaking and tree trimming and whistle-pig trapping, as well as whatever it was that made up my New Year’s resolutions? Those are still currently deferred to an indeterminate time in the future.
I’m finishing things off in a more focused way. For example, recently I was charged with wrapping things up for that last dill pickle in the jar. Last week I was given the responsibility of culmination of activity for a jar of peanut butter.
I closed out the inventory in the egg carton. I dealt with the leftover pork chop, tossed salad, half an avocado, some rusty lettuce, and some suspicious-looking yogurt.
Some days I need to be resourceful. I may combine a hardening slice of cheese with the heel of a loaf of bread and the vestiges of some honey mustard, including the dried fragments on the rim of the bottle, along with some questionable chunks of chicken.
These tasks may seem pretty approachable for the ordinary person, but I do struggle with a certain handicap. Not the one you first thought of. Something from my childhood. Still not what you thought of.
When I was a kid, my siblings and I would pester our mom for snacks, which is the obligation of every kid in the U.S. It’s part of our mission, to ignore entirely whatever else we have been fed, or offered, or what might be good for us. If there were cookies in the house, usually some off-brand, past-the-due date, slightly damaged packaging collection of broken pieces, we would be hyper focused on eating them.
Mom would debate and defer and delay but finally she would say:
“Fine, but if you eat all the cookies, then you won’t have them anymore.”
I’m not sure why this was effective. I don’t remember any of us coming up with the obvious answer: “So?” Somehow our mother’s philosophy simply worked. We heard what she said, and shrugged our bony shoulders in resignation, as if to say: “Well you can’t argue with that kind of unassailable logic.”
It’s possible she meant something deep. Like: if you eat the cookie, you will no longer have the potential of the cookie. You won’t have the anticipation of eating it. You will miss out on the pleasure of deferring pleasure. You will lose out on the experience of hope that is latent in each bite of cookie
It’s also possible she was expressing the finiteness of things, the limited delight that comes from owning them, the fleeting experience of consumption that merely leads to emptiness and the desire for more.
Or, she was just telling us to leave her alone, that she can’t say yes to everything, and that cookie money doesn’t grow on trees and there’s no telling when she will bring home another bag of groceries that includes these awful substitutes for happiness.
What’s funny is that this sentence, “Fine, but if you eat all the cookies, then you won’t have them anymore” has stayed with me for six decades, I daresay stayed with my siblings. It is one of the many things our mom is remembered for.
So when I go to the pantry and look for ways to employ my new skill, this powerful, exceptional ability to dispatch the last of whatever faces me to epicurean purgatory, I am struggling with a deeply seated conflict. I am driven to finish off the last of the somewhat rubbery taco chips in the bag, and also haunted by the knowledge that once I do, I won’t have them anymore.
As proud of my forgettable skill as I am, I am more impressed with the little slice of desperate philosophy my mom threw together, like some casserole made from leftovers and cornflakes. There were plenty of wonderful treasures she passed on to us, some more valuable than others, but this one always makes me smile.
Hope this finds you remembered,
David
Copyright © 2023 David Smith
Comments