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<\/p>\nIf you ever feel compelled to examine your lifestyle in one rapid, unmerciful snapshot—a picture that unveils your purchasing habits, your eating patterns, your organizational skills, your housecleaning talents, your virtues or vices as a pet parent and neighbor\u2014consider moving to a new home.\u00a0 By the time you get out (or should we say get away?), there is nothing about your personal life that will escape full display for those involved in moving logistics. \u00a0One has to stiffen the backbone, and get ready, or face imminent collapse from embarrassment.<\/p>\n
One small scene in the tragic comedy of my recent move was staged in the kitchen, a week or so before the trucks were coming.\u00a0 I sought my wise daughter\u2019s advice on what to pack and what to toss, and the kitchen loomed large in the pack\/purge opportunity equation.\u00a0 As the scene opens, she is diving into the spice cabinet.<\/p>\n
In a kindly tone, she tries to divert my view from the initial evidence, as though gently turning the face of a small child from a doctor holding sterilized, steel implements used to stitch up that gashed lip.\u00a0 \u201cDon\u2019t look, Mom, just toss it,\u201d she instructs, passing me a bottle of slightly greenish\/beige-ish oregano leaves, nudging me slightly and pointing to the trash can.<\/p>\n
Right.\u00a0 I reside among those tortured souls who are constitutionally incapable of accepting such instructions.\u00a0 When told not to look, I immediately do. What do you mean, don\u2019t look?\u00a0 I ask, more curious than ever. Why wouldn\u2019t I look?<\/p>\n
She responds calmly, without judgment, to my query.\u00a0 \u201cThat one expired a while back,\u201d she says, keeping her eyes on task at hand, her back to me.\u00a0 I laser in: How long is awhile?\u00a0 \u201c2010,\u201d comes the steady answer, the speaker still avoiding my eyes, possibly laughing silently where I can’t see it.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s pause here and nibble on this in for a moment.\u00a0 That\u2019s an entire, complete, recorded-in-the-books decade past expiration date.\u00a0 Ten years since the tiny, (originally) green, fragrant leaves were deemed too old to do their job in soups, lasagna, or whatever culinary effort they might have adorned, when at their peak and ready to do their flavorful best.<\/p>\n
Rocking at this revelation, I froze for a strange moment as those 10 years streaked precariously past the window of the mind\u2019s eye.\u00a0 For a decade, the oregano sat patiently in position on the spice rack, half-empty and technically retired, but still available to deliver its life\u2019s mission should a middlin\u2019 cook like me fail to notice the difference.\u00a0 You\u2019d win a bet if you wagered that I had used the contents much more recently. How long since I thought to check the spice cabinet?\u00a0 Candidly, did I know spices actually expired?* \u00a0What transpired in that kitchen, in that house, in the lives that intersected there, in those vanished years?<\/p>\n
I squinted, looking away and remembering.\u00a0 A decade of blessing and tragedy, the bizarre and the humdrum.\u00a0 Two deaths in my family, my beloved younger sister and my cherished father.\u00a0 Joining memories of shattering heartbreak with those of indescribable joy, the two youngest lights of my life, a splendid grandson and his fabulous younger sister, arrived in that decade.\u00a0 New career opportunities transpired, after other ones proved painful disappointments.\u00a0 Dear friends gathered around my table, as often as I could manage it.\u00a0 Surely, on balance, they were 10 years that shared the same human peaks and valleys lived by so many.<\/p>\n
Still, it was a life that did not require enough oregano to finish one lonely little bottle.<\/p>\n