Leftovers

When I packed my suitcase for my Thanksgiving weekend trip, I neglected to bring containers for turkey and dressing, or any other goody that seemed to need a trip to my refrigerator. Leftovers are important to me. There is no food that can’t be reused ~ unless of course it’s past it’s expiry date! One day, at a certain workplace, I got my lunch out as always, put what I called my personal TV dinner in the microwave ~ or maybe it was the toaster oven ~ and readied myself to eat a home cooked chicken dinner - or maybe it was a some stew leftover from the chicken dinner. One of my colleagues asked me what I considered a very strange question:  Do you always eat leftovers? I replied that not only do I eat leftovers, but I make a meal big enough so I have leftovers. Cooking a meal ‘just for yourself’ can be really boring and doesn’t quite have the same level of deliciousness that a bubbling chicken stew or turkey soup would have. Lasagna for one? I don’t think so. I must confess, between summertime salads and retirement I am of the cooking habit! I’ll need to fix that issue as it’s now time for soup, stew and any other cooking to fill my kitchen with aromas of home.

Anyway, I did come away from Thanksgiving with my sons with a different sort of leftover ~ little purple and blue paper flowers from the concert I attended with them. These fragile flowers were crumpled in a corner of my purse. Straightening them out, I ironed (and burned) them a bit and arranged them on a favourite lap blanket. I know that those fragile little beauties will not last. Once I have used them in a photo op for this blog post, there will no longer be a use for them, at least that I can think of right now. The memory of them, however is different. I missed a part of the sixties experience, not because of anything other than a whole lot of turmoil, raising kids, nursing school…..but those are other stories that do not belong here. When those beautiful little flowers floated down from the dark heights of the stadium, spotlights playing off of them as they landed on heads and hands while rock and roll music played I had a far away taste of that exciting time. The memory of that evening with my sons, merely tiny humans in the sixties, is the most important to me. Memory is fragile, not something that can be taken out, ironed and arranged neatly on anything. Photos help me when my memory fails me, which happens with a bit more frequency than I want, but could be because I’m not 25 anymore? That issue aside, the memory of the feeling of love and joy stays just like the aromas of baking bread or a bubbling stew from my mom’s kitchen. For that I am truly grateful.

“Once, I was a master at recycling leftovers. Now 

I cultivate the art of simmering memories”

~ Jean-Dominique Bauby