Sugar and Spice

In my kitchen cupboard next to the Skippy peanut butter is a small pottery jar.  The sides are worn, and the cork is stained a darker brown from years of holding cinnamon and sugar. For years it resided on the shelf at my mother-in-law's, Lil Hartke.

I think that little jar holds magical powers.

With just a light sprinkling of cinnamon-sugar (kinda like pixie dust) I am transported back into Lil's bright blue kitchen with patchwork curtains over the windows. The years fall away, and I can see Lil standing over the stove frying bacon or over the sink deboning shrimp for her traditional holiday shrimp cocktail.

And the sweetness I feel has nothing to do with the sugar in the mixture.

This sweetness is mixed with memories of loss and happy times and thoughts of being a new bride and spending time with my husband's mother.

I didn't always appreciate her.

When I was newly married, someone told me that a man usually marries a woman like his mother. I looked at Lil with shallow eyes and laughed, knowing I was nothing like her. She struggled with her addition to cigarettes. She never lived outside of Saint Louis, spending most of her life in the tiny house on Starboard Street where she and Erv raised their three boys.

I saw her as a small woman living in a small world.

I was a fool.

Through the years I watched her love and care for her husband as he struggled with the lingering effects of a stroke. We vacationed together and she taught me the gift of truly relaxing as we would face the day with nothing organized or planned.  

Later when the guys were busy golfing, she and I discovered the joy of boutique shopping. And in her later years, I observed her courage and tenacity while battling cancer.

With wiser eyes, I remember her, and realize she was content with her family, her faith and an intimate circle of friends. We should all be so fortunate.

At different times I have been in conversations with young brides who are struggling with their mother-in-laws. I tell them to give it time. To look for things they can appreciate. To not focus on the differences, but on how they are the same as women. That sometimes small worlds and small things can contain a lot of sweetness.

Like my jar of cinnamon and sugar.