Lessons from a Canister Set

People were generous. We started as an engaged couple with almost nothing but the clothes in our respective closets. Remarkably by the time we were married, we had our new little apartment supplied with all of the essentials. There was even enough money left over for a few small luxuries. As we shopped with the end of our credit, I found I kept coming back to this set of porcelain kitchen canisters. I absolutely loved them and they matched our colors beautifully at the time. John was cautious if not a little skeptical. They were rather pricey. Would I really use them? Would we have room for them on our small countertop? And then he asked me one more probing question: “If you had to, would you grind them up to make plaster for a temple?”

As a young 20-year-old who’d never owned anything particularly fine before, I had a difficult time answering “yes.” But once I could, I didn’t feel so guilty making an indulgent purchase. We went home with the canisters. I never was able to look at them though without thinking “would I grind them up like the early saints did for their first temple?”     http://lds.org/friend/1975/03/sparkling-walls?lang=eng

Over sixteen years have passed since that event. The canisters have since held a wide variety of contents: the usual kitchen staples of flour and sugar, measuring spoons and cups, even box tops and milk caps the kids have collected for school. When I finally realized that their usefulness in my home was spent, when it was at last time to pass them on to another owner, I faced another struggle. I was reluctant to give them up, not so much for their functionality as for the reminder they have been to not set my heart upon material things. In the end, I sent them off as a charitable donation. Perhaps sharing them with someone I don’t even know was finally passing the test that allowed me to justify their purchase to begin with.

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Puzzled

John gave me a new puzzle for Christmas which we assembled on New Years’ Eve. It spurred a week of puzzling—something we’ve not done in a long time. Of the five we began, most notable was the 1000+ piece Mickey Mouse photo-mosaic puzzle that my eldest received for Christmas two years ago. It has never been put together in its entirety, as it was a daunting task for him to do all alone and he gave up after a while. I decided to tolerate living without a dining room table long enough to see it completed. Chris was highly amused that I was drawn in so easily and so frequently to the week-long project. He commented “It’s been so cool to have this out! It started as something I was just going to do with Em, but now it’s become something the whole family has worked on.”

Wouldn’t you know it though, as we got down to the last few pieces, there was one that was simply not to be found! Somehow it wandered off in the last two years of inactivity. As with most things, even our best efforts don’t always turn out perfectly. Even so, the process and product were no less satisfying to its participants. Who would have thought that filling in the missing gaps of a picture could be such a unifying and bonding activity? Though we didn’t always work on it at the same time, it created a unique sense of purpose to see it through. Now if I could only get them to have a similar drive to keep their shared bathroom clean...

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