hodge podge

I can already hear them.

My children.

In the far future.

Discussing me.

Dissecting the way I do things.

Analyzing why I wrote our meals on chalkboard cabinets

and what my obsession with this blog was all about.

And calling me a cheapskate.

I know they will.

I used to look at my mother as she gathered the remaining zip-loc baggies from our lunch leftovers each afternoon.

How she dumped the crumbly contents in the trash and then rinsed each and every baggie for a future lunch.

Yes.

Rinsed her baggies.

To me, then, that was right next to wearing black lipstick and piercing your nipples.

It was crazy.

And tonight, I looked around my kitchen

and I just grinned.

Riley was assigned the task of cutting fresh, local corn from the cob to freeze.

We didn’t have enough baggies.

I ignored Riley’s suggestion of driving to the store and I improvised.

I gathered an odd assortment of old glass containers that I had been saving for just such an occassion.

Spaghetti sauce jars and salsa containers.  Pickle jars and olive jars.

It was a wild looking mess, all crammed with golden corn.

And I loved it.

It was beautiful.

I don’t even want to use baggies anymore.

Who needs them?

I want this

re-used,

re-purposed,

just-like-my-momma

hodge-podge of

Making Do.

I was making peach-blueberry jam on the other counter and I didn’t even care when I ran out of the cute Mason jars.

I grabbed old butter containers, a parmesean cheese holder and whatever else was in the back shelf of just-in-case.

And I poured syrupy-rich, exquisitely colored from God himself, jam into those simple containers.

Those throw-away items suddenly have new life.

Sort of perfect – isn’t it?

Something divine dwelling in an ugly vessel.

(Oh, how I am in love with the profound of every day.)

And I can’t wait for some fall afternoon to serve that jam on little edible plates of Ritz crackers spread with cream cheese and topped with peach jam.

Just like my mother made.

I look forward to winter stews with handfuls of frozen-still-fresh niblets of corn stirred in the pot.

And I just hope I live long enough to sit with my children at a kitchen table in some farmhouse and laugh about the silly containers from which the kids had to eat jam or serve corn.