Sweet - Savory Sixty: Day 63

Travel Day

I am getting older.

And I am turning into my mother - more and more every year.

It is also occurring to me that the mother I am turning into is the old version of my mother, the mature one - the one that survived the death of her son - maybe not the death of her parents, yet.

This older version regretted what my parents had NOT done with us. Because survival and security were more important than anything while we were growing up. Keeping 4 children alive, fed. clothed and educated into adulthood took everything they had.

And they made it.

And regretted not doing more.

But that’s how it goes. You need the insurance, the AAA in case you need it. Everyone has hick-ups. The ability to absorb the hick-ups is different - and therein lies the problem.

Growing up with a certain level of security - or insecurity as the case may be - influences the level of security you feel as a child and the level of risk that you are willing to take. It’s a fluid thing, that adjustment.

My daughter and her hubby shop sales to the level of obsession. I don’t think I had ever seen the expired section at the local Kroger before my son in law took me shopping at their Kroger one day.

And I didn’t know about grade B eggs at all - until he told me about them.

I imagine that’s a leftover from how he grew up when he was little. His Mom certainly does not live like that now - but I imagine that she did when he was little. After all, she was a single parent who had escaped from an abusive relationship. She would have known how to maneuver the system, too.

Because I lived like that for a long time - different “like that”, different frugal - I used to look for sales like they do now. But I cook differently now. I have gone all the way back to the potato. My food is about as “natural” as they come. Hardly anything I buy comes in a box any more. That’s certainly different from the way it used to be.

Because of that, I can now pay $18 for a glass of wine at DTW without blinking. I mean, I blink a little bit, but I can do that now. Because I don’t do it often.

I’m one flight into the trip. The young man next to me chatted with me just at the end of the flight. I wished he had talked sooner - we could have had an interesting conversation. But both of us played games on our respective phones for most of the flight.

The second flight was similarly uneventful.

And now I’m

home.