It's the Same, but It's Not the Same

It's the same, but it's not the same.

I haven't planted a garden in years and years, but the last couple of years I have been planting a few seeds in a waist-high container....I don't have to stoop.  I do NOT consider myself a gardener so don't ever expect any prize winning vegetables from me.  

BUT, this morning I was able to gather a few lettuce leaves for a salad tonight.  I washed and rinsed a couple of times, dunking my hands in the cool water and swirling the leaves around and I had pleasant memories of doing that during my childhood. 

Mom would gather great big bunches of lettuce to make wilted lettuce from the grease she had collected.  (We had to have a lot of lettuce for the seven of us because when lettuce wilts, it does just that....shrinks into nothing.)  I can tell you that there was nothing better tasting as that salad.  I absolutely love it.  It was our job to rinse the lettuce and rinse we did.  We had to dunk and whirl those lettuce leaves over and over and over again, changing water several times to get the sand off.

As I was rinsing the lettuce this morning, it was the same, BUT it was NOT the same.  I walked into a cool kitchen, almost cold.  Back on Route One, Box 208, Prague, OK, it was HOT.  Hot when we picked it, hot in the kitchen, but that COOL water was everything.  It made the unpleasant task of picking it turn into a great expectation of the delicious wilted lettuce salad that mom was going to make.  I have never been able to make it as good as mom nor have I tasted anybody's else's that was THAT good.

It's the same, but it's not the same.

I love you.