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a visit at GMnGP’s – salt of the earth January 4, 2009

We just went to spend a week at Grandma (GM) and Grandpa (GP)’s house. The kids and I went. Howard didn’t go. He was out of vacation days. I haven’t spent a full week there in years and it was so incredibly wonderful. It went by so quickly. I had my digital camera and I probably took 200 pictures and a couple handfuls of videos. I took them until my memory card was full. What’s so amazing is how this technology becomes such an important part of our lives. Grandma kept picking up the camera which was constantly on the kitchen counter so it could be at arm’s reach and she would go through the pictures with Grandpa. It used to be that when we took pictures we would think of how much film we had left and the cost of developing pictures. Now we can just take tons of pictures and decide which ones to develop later. GM loved some of the features of my camera like zooming in while looking through pictures. She wished she had those features on hers. I asked Jack to look at it and find out if she did. Literally one second later he said she did have the zoom feature and showed me how to use it.

So perhaps it’s because of their age or perhaps it’s because of the digital camera making it so easy to take tons of pictures – or perhaps it’s because of my role as family historian – but I decided to take pictures of the things around their house that are so quintessentially GMnGP. They’ve had these things for YEARS. In and of themselves, they are insignificant. But, part of what makes them significant is the fact that these items have been in their house for 30 or 40 or 60 years or at least as long as I’ve been alive.

One of the things that struck me the most was their salt and pepper shaker.  While the salt shaker is new, I remember the pepper shaker from when they lived in CT. But, they are different shakers. Believe it or not, the meaning of this was something I thought about a lot.

GM is the quintessential (there I go using that word again – need to thesaurus it) hostess. She comes from the time that a good hostess never put things on the table without a serving dish. The milk doesn’t go on the table unless it’s in a pitcher. The cream has it’s own pitcher. Nothing goes on the table in a tall serving vessel because everyone should be able to see the person across from them. But yet, the salt and pepper shakers were a mixed set – likely because one broke.

So here comes the next quality – they don’t waste. The items that were up in their house for literally decades were not special nor expensive. But GMnGP don’t see a need to replace things just because.

The third thing about the salt and pepper shaker was that everyone in the family has enough money to buy them a wonderful new salt and pepper shaker set yet nobody does. I was compelled to go out and buy them a new set but I wondered why Jackie and Christie never had. They certainly have plenty of money. But the reason, I realized, they never bought them a new set was out of respect. Replacing something that GM saw fit to keep on her table would say that both they saw her as a less than perfect hostess and it would also say that they did not appreciate GMnGP’s value of money. GMnGP have had the same stainless set for years. They had several sets of cups which they only added to once the previous set had dwindled enough to not be enough to serve a large group.

But back to the salt and pepper shaker. As I pondered on this for an incredibly long period of time, I started to think that GMnGP were what they call the salt of the earth. You know how you hear some expressions forever and you have a vague sense of what the expression is trying to communicate but you haven’t ever used it because you don’t fully understand what it means? So I made a mental note to look it up when I arrived home.

5:13 Ye – Not the apostles, not ministers only; but all ye who are thus holy, are the salt of the earth – Are to season others.

Mark 9:50

Salt is good. But if salt loses its taste, how can you restore its flavor? Keep on having salt among yourselves, and live in peace with one another.”

Colossians 4:6

Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer everyone.

Matthew 5:13 is part of the beatitudes and was preceded by:

“How blessed are those who make peace, because it is they who will be called God’s children! “How blessed are you whenever people insult you, persecute you, and say all sorts of evil things against you falsely because of me.

After it says “you are the light of the world”

So, being an unscholared, I translate this as people who are the salt of the earth are apostles. They bring flavor and make things better. They are the light of the world, the most basic seasoning that brings out the best in what it seasons. Salt is present naturally in the earth. It is timeless and good.

The Farberware story is next.