Nut Meat Chopper

I suppose that as you get older you tend to spend more and more time remembering the past. I’m not sure why that is, but I can guess.

I have heard it said that old people live in the past, younger people live in the future and children live in the now. Nice saying, but you just can’t generalize that kind of stuff. I think everyone lives in the now because you have the living of your life day to day happening in the now. Younger people do live in the future, but that is because their lives take more planning to fit all that they want to get done in the time they have. When you have two soccer games a dance recital, shopping, classes for work and if you are lucky some time for entertainment, it does take organization and planning. Now, you are older, a lot of the things that used to fill your days have already been done and you are back to living in the now.

Yes, I do spend more time remembering the past than I did when I was younger, but that is because I have more past to remember. I have good friends that live far away and I don’t see anymore. I have friends and loved ones that have passed away that deserve to be remembered from time to time. I simply have a lot more good memories than a younger person would have. Oh, I am still making great memories and I imagine that I will be remembering these in the near and far future.

Some of the memories are from when I was growing up and living with my mom and dad. Mom and dad pretty much went nuts around Christmas. I don’t know if all families went all out, but we did. Mom and dad would send out 200 to 250 cards out every year. It seemed as if they would send them to every person they had ever met. The prison guard in Germany that dad made friends with during the war, the guys that built our house, everyone they worked with and of course friends and relatives. There was Christmas decorations that went up around the house, the tree that dad bought and somehow it never had a straight trunk and had to be wired to the wall. It always looked beautiful and never failed to attract Santa.

Christmas morning would find the tree nearly buried in gifts. I don’t think I could have had a more perfect time. Some of the best times during the holidays happened in the kitchen. Mom would make all kinds of cookies, snacks and special holiday food. We got to help make the cookies, and one of the things I loved to do was to chop the nuts for the cookies. Mom had a special little gizmo that fit onto a jar that you would fill with nuts and when you turned the handle it chopped the nuts into the perfect size for cooking. I got to work the gizmo! Strange as it sounds, I would look forward to that all year round. Good times!

Today I was in the second hand store and I saw the little nut chopping gizmo! Too cool! Of course I bought it. It looked as if it had never been cleaned and it took about an hour to get it as clean as it is now, but it was worth it. I can hardly wait until I need to chop some nuts.

There are a lot of things that bring joy in life, family, friends, work if you are lucky and memories of all the wonderful times and people. Oh, and if you are truly lucky…a Nut Meat Chopper.