Making Memories

From Downton Abbey
“Life is the business of making memories,” Charles Carson says to Mrs. Elsie Hughes in Downton Abbey.


Maybe it is the disease of the old that sets in during the retirement years – the constant excursions to things past. Two days ago, I took out an old Tupperware container that I hadn’t used for years. It was our old rice canister. It can hold 20 pounds of rice. It is over 40 years old. We bought it at a garage
sale in the home of missionary friends who were closing their years of missionary service in Indonesia as we were starting out on ours sometime in 1977. Tupperware containers were very valuable to missionaries who lived and served in tropical countries. They were so effective for keeping moisture and bugs out of flour, sugar, rice and even in protecting delicate underwear from silverfish and other little critters. If cared for well, they last and last and last.

Until just about five years ago, I had those avocado-colored canisters and orange containers in active service in my kitchen cupboards. They had traveled with us in our various sojourns that began with a one-bedroom apartment in Pacifica, California where we were young newlyweds. We got a few of them as wedding presents. Then they crossed the ocean to Indonesia to join us in the little town of Batu, Malang in East Java. About four years later they were brought back to California. They served us faithfully as we moved to Cincinnati, Ohio where Don went to Seminary for a couple of years. There they were mostly filled with not just the staples, but with cookies and homemade fudge as our babies

grew into toddlers and to preschool kids. The Tupperware molds continually did service for making jello and such other things as were popular in the Midwest. Coming back to San Francisco, they were like old friends. They were faithful and true, and could be depended upon to do what they were made for. As the years went by, our lives changed. The children grew up and our needs altered. The items in my kitchen cupboards and drawers had to give way to other things. We needed room for the bread maker, the Crockpot and the new coffeemaker that ground the beans and brewed the coffee to completion as I programmed it. The newer kitchen canisters looked so much better than the avocado Tupperware. My old friends were relegated to the bottom cupboards where they were retired and recently, to a closet where we kept donations to Goodwill.


Twenty Pounds of Brown Rice
Two days ago, I was at the Pacific Super, an Asian store where we regularly shop. I noticed that the 5-pound bag of brown rice for which we have been paying $3.99 has gone up by almost $2.00. Next to it was a 20-lb. bag of California-produced brown rice selling for $11.99. Even my mathematically challenged brain noticed how much better this deal was, so I heaved the 20-pound bag onto my shopping cart and brought it home.

I was proud of myself for making such an astute rice decision. The only problem was I didn’t have a container for 20 pounds of rice. Quick as a computer return arrow, I did an instant recall of the old Tupperware canister in the closet where I keep things to be donated to Goodwill. There it was – our faithful Tupperware canister that served us so well through the years – in the kitchen cupboard of a young bride, on the tile counter of our little home in Indonesia, on the shelf of an apartment in Cincinnati, Ohio and in a kitchen cabinet in Daly City and on and on the memories kept coming back. The sight and feel of this old friend opened the floodgates of memories. Once more, it will serve us well and make more memories with us.


The butler of Downton Abbey put it well. “Life is the business of making memories. “