The worst birthday gift I ever gave my mother weighed more than ten pounds before you put anything in it.
It was a big cast iron pot with a heavy lid, for her 76th birthday. I thought she’d love it for her soups. She thanked me and made one pot of chicken soup in it.
About a year later, she asked me to take it home with me. “It’s lovely, honey,” she said. “But I can’t lift it with soup in it.”
I felt terrible. But I learned something that day that I’ve thought about ever since. Somewhere in her mid-70s, the things in my mother’s house didn’t change, but their weight did.
So this is what my mother let go of after 75. It’s a list of the pots, boxes and chores that got too heavy. And it’s the things she kept, even when they were heavy, because some things are worth a little help.
The Question My Mother Asked
My mother didn’t make a big plan. She had one question, and she asked it about almost everything.
“Can I carry this with one hand, and still hold on with the other?”
If the answer was no, she thought about it. She didn’t always let the thing go, but she stopped carrying it alone.
(That’s where my own one-hand question in the kitchen came from. I just didn’t know it until I wrote this.)