The Power of Simple Things

Ok I will tell you a wonderful story maybe you can understand. 1st, I live alone on a ranch and at age 66 have started cooking. Just now I fixed sausage link (smells wonderful) and egg. Toast, water, 4 grapes, banana, coffee.

Then cleanup. Cleanup so wonderful if have gift of time/choice and I revisit my mother. Cooking AND cleanup was her “meditation/contemplation”. It really can be if I choose the gift of time and use familiar simple activity to park my thoughts and just be in the moment. If I “zen-out” the cleanup becomes mind clearing simple “Karate Kid movie” motion with a great satisfying completion!

And there is another connection. At age 8 or 9 on my grandparents simple farm Rebecca Moore my granny started letting me fix breakfast. Bacon, eggs, fried potatoes, toast. I loved it. Freda, my mother the drill Instructor over me and 2 brothers), came after two weeks (summertime) and the first day declared, “Rebecca he’ll probably start a fire and burn the house down” to which my granny calmly replied, “well we have a tub of flour we can throw to put out the fire and if the house burns down we have easy escape”. Cam (my dad, the southern “daddy” to me until I got to teenage years) laughed — he thought this wonderful jousting. I kept on cooking (everyone ate it, dad with a big scoop of grape jelly) but at that instant deep down inside of me I was doing a fist pump (✊ yessss!)