I remember Momma saying how the years would fly by once I hit twenty five. She always demonstrated the passing of the years by blinking both eyes while saying “25…30…35…40…50…”

Like everything else Momma told me as a teenager, it went in one ear and out the other.
She was right.

I blinked and the years have sped right by. It somehow seems so surreal. One day you are dancing at your favorite club on Market Street and the next day you are at your orthopedist asking how the hell you can’t place your arm to touch the center of your back any longer.

Then, I thought about my Momma.

I thought about her mother’s, my grandmother, story about the chinquapin patch:

There was a young girl and she spent her day walking through the chinquapin patch with her Grandmother. Her Grandmother told her to pick the most perfect one as they made their way through the patch. As she walked, she would pick up the spiny nuts and, one by one, she would put them down. One would be too small, another too prickly. One would be cracked, another not shiny enough. She had a hard time not finding one covered in its thorns.
One by one, she picked one up just to find a flaw so she went to the next.
Until she got to the end and she was empty handed.

Momma seemed to tell us this story at least once a year. She reminded us that we were too particular about things: clothes, apartments or houses, boys…The version she told my older sister went like this:

A young boy sat with his Grandmother and asked her how she married his Granddaddy. She said “Let’s go for a walk”. On the walk she said for him to pick put the best stick he could find along the way. Some were short. Some were long. Some were weak. Some were strong, but none were good enough. He would pick one up just to replace it with another. He ended up at the end of the trail with nothing but a twig.
He sat and cried, holding the scrawny twig in his little hand.
His Grandmother simply replied, “And that is how I married your Grandfather…”

Two stories. The same ending, both about not ending up with what you wanted.

Regret…

We walk through life, sometimes running.
When we are younger, we think we are indestructible. Little things don’t seem to worry us because it is about the big picture and how we are going to look, feel and how it affects us. We think we have all of the time in the world.

We look at life shortsightedly.
We never know if we will walk the path and get the prize or will we end up empty handed.

My Mother lived with regret. On her death bed, she spoke about all of the things she wished she had done, the places she longed to visit, the experiences she felt she had missed. It was very sad, really, but it was also a wake up call.

It led my sister to follow her dream of opening her own restaurant.

It has led me to writing again and planning my next steps in food and heart.

We all walk through our own patches in life. Some are moments of blind faith where you jump in with your soul and land on your feet. Some are periods of falling over and over again because you get stuck with a burr in your heart or head.

Those are the tough ones–the ones where you get in your own way.

In life, there are mistakes and there are lessons. The mistakes are the ones we do voer and over again, but they do not have to define us. The lessons teach us to look harder, to search deeper, to love harder.

I guess, you could say, I am still walking through the Chinquapin patch.