Life is Like Stewed Tomatoes?
Somehow in August this year I ended up with a bushel of homegrown tomatoes...and I don't have a garden. So, I had to find something to do with all these tomatoes. When I was growing up my parents canned and froze A TON of food from our 1/2 acre garden. "Hey!", I thought to myself, "why don't you stew the tomatoes and put them up." A lovely thought but I have never canned anything in my life and didn't want to learn on my own without my mom around to teach me. I called my mom, explained my predicament and she simply said, "well, freeze them." Duh! So she gave me basic directions and one morning I set to work.
She told me to scald the tomatoes in boiling water and not to worry about the bad spots. Take them out, cool them, take off the skins, plop in another pot, stew them briefly and dish them up and freeze them in my handy-dandy Tupperware. As I worked I came across a few that plain ol' needed to be thrown out. The rest went into the pot, even the ones that were already growing a small amount of mold or had some really yucky spots. As I started to peel them I was amazed that the bad spots just popped right out of the tomatoes along with the skins. And I got to thinking (sorry if this is a little cheesy)....but aren't we all a little like stewed tomatoes? As we grow older we get some bad spots on us. Hurts, tragedies, crises, nervous breakdowns, grudges. Then one day we're thrown into some hot water. A transition in our life - a graduation, marriage, birth of a child/grandchild, a divorce, a death. We pass through and everything changes. We get a new kind of normal. Hopefully some of those bad spots peel away. They are forgotten or don't matter anymore. We become a newer, shinier version of ourselves. Older, wiser, more seasoned. We come out stronger and better despite the bad spots.
Eleanor Roosevelt once said, "A woman is like a tea bag: You never know her strength until you drop her in hot water." Amen, sister.
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