What We Can Learn from Funfetti Cake

     I was never able to break my mom of the habit of buying food at discount dollar markets.  When you had to raise three kids on a small income, it taught her the thrill of the hunt — finding that one bargain others missed.  Now in her eighties, I mainly worried she would get expired food that would make her sick.

     Well, I was wrong; she never did. 

She has recently decided to stay in assisted living, so one chore we have started is going through her late-seventies olive green upright freezer out in the garage.  The door does not seal completely, so it is held closed by a worn red bungee cord looped around the handle and attached to metal shelving next to the freezer.  Sure enough, it was stuffed with bargain treasures like peppermint chocolate from some long-ago Christmas and meat frozen so long I was unsure of its cut.  But the shelf that captured my attention the most was filled with boxes of cake mix — white cake, Funfetti, chocolate, carrot.  She had mentioned these to me.

     “I’m sorry I have to leave my cake mixes behind,” she said on the phone as we talked about things that needed to be done.  There are not any ovens in her new digs.  “Be sure you take them if you want them.” She could not see me because we were on the phone, but I narrowed my eyes at this comment; I suspected she had hit the discount store.

     But, like the good son I am, I pulled them out one at a time to check them: Expiration date February 20, 2017; June 12, 2017, and a very faded expiration date of 04/06/16.  Not one of the many boxed cakes had expired less than three years ago.  Sigh… to be honest, given my weight, I was not so sure I needed a Funfetti cake anyway.

     The reality is life catches up to all of us at some point, and we have to leave things behind.  Sometimes it is because we age out of our homes and are forced to downsize; sometimes it is for more sudden reasons like a fire or a death.  In my case, if I had to suddenly leave things behind, my kids will probably find shocking amount of duplicate toiletries.  I always have an extra shaving cream waiting, and the minute I need it, I pick up the next one.  Sometimes it gets out of hand.  I get confused and end up buying stacks of extras.  I mean, does anyone really need four extra sticks of Gillette Arctic Ice Men's Deodorant or three spare 1.5-liter bottles of mouthwash?  (Yes, I just went into the bathroom and counted.)

     Part of this has made me want to do a little clearing out of my own house.  I have not cracked those German books from my college days in four decades, so it is a safe bet I could live without them.  I do not want my own kids to have to rummage through things and exclaim, “Why in the world did he keep this all those years?!”  Could I live with just one extra deodorant instead of four?  In my autumn years, I would like to walk a little more lightly on the earth.

     But there is another part of me that thinks about how my years have gone by quicker than I could ever have imagined.  Maybe the lesson is we should not wait so long to make that Funfetti cake.