Don’t miss your window
You know everything we do in life has a period when it is best by.
Marriage, children, working life, education and so many other of the things we do, are often set best in certain periods of our lives.
I have missed a lot of windows in my life, I will be the first to admit. Some of those misses, as time has passed have brought regrets and sadness. But life comes and goes as we plan. Living it at the moment in time when we are existing is probably the best path for all of us.
I recently spent the day doing what my folks have done for generations. Possibly not to the annual extent that we once practiced, since that meant we had something to eat all the year long.
That was harvesting, canning and freezing greens of various types.
I have always loved eating greens with a bit of fatback for seasoning and a piece of cornbread on the side. A meal is made of them.
I will have to admit my efforts were not as efficient as they could have been and I lost a lot of greens simply due to timing.
I didn’t have the time needed to press through all the greens, cook and process immediately. Thus, I lost several pounds of greens to turning and wilting over the subsequent days since the cutting.
Despite the delay, I am only one person, so there is only so much that can be accomplished while trying to keep life afloat.
But I will know next time to make sure I have adequate time to dedicate to the effort.
When I was little, the process was swifter, there were many hands, making the work lighter.
The cooking and processing were done as they came straight from the garden with no time to spare.
I can still see my grandmother’s iron pots lined up on tripods above a burning fire in the yard as each crop was processed for canning.
Even though it was several days of work, each crop went fast, because everyone focused their efforts on that and filled the root cellar for months to come with that vegetable. Then they moved on to the next one.
You couldn’t wait or you’d miss the window of goodness. Whether it was beans, corn, greens, beets or any other crop, they got our full attention.
So, for everything we pursue in life there is a window of goodness – when it is the best time for that life experience to come to pass. Now that doesn’t mean we can’t go to college in our eighties. I have known several people who accomplished degrees at that point in life. That also doesn’t mean we can’t get married, have children later in life, if biologically possible, although it does often require more energy than afforded to keep up with the responsibilities associated.
As it is said to everything there is a season, and as I worked through my step back into the process of canning and freezing greens, it reminded me, we must make the time to do what is needed when its required or we will loose part of our crop.
The same is true in life. We must make the time to do what we want during the window when everything is good for that purpose. Don’t miss your windows in life, once they are closed and painted shut, it’s hard to get them open again as time goes along.
