KEEPERS

AUTHOR UNKNOWN

Some things you keep.  Like good teeth.  Warm coats.  Bald husbands.  They’re good for you, reliable and practical and so sublime that to throw them away would make the garbage man a thief. So you hang on because something old is sometimes better than something new, and what you know is often better than a stranger.

These are my thoughts.  They make me sound old, old and tame and dull at a time

when everybody else is risky and racy and flashing all that’s new and improved in

their lives.  New careers, new thighs, new lips, new cars.  The world is dizzy with

trade-ins. I could keep track, but I don’t think I want to.

I grew up in the fifties and sixties with practical parents; a mother, God bless
her, who washed aluminum foil after she cooked in it, then reused it.

A father who was happier getting old shoes fixed than buying new ones.

They weren’t poor, my parents, they were just satisfied.  Their marriage was

good, their dreams focused.  Their best friends lived barely a wave away.

I can see them now, Dad in trousers and tee shirt on one of his tractors

and Mom in a house dress, lawn mower in one hand, dishtowel in the other.

It was a time for fixing things – a curtain rod, the kitchen radio, screen door,

the oven door, the hem in a dress.

Things you keep.  It was a way of life, and sometimes it made me crazy.  All

that re-fixing, reheating, renewing, I wanted just once to be wasteful.
Waste meant affluence. Throwing things away meant there’d always be more.

But then my father died.  I was struck with the pain of learning that sometimes
there isn’t any “more.”  Sometimes what you care about most gets all used up
and goes away, never to return.

So, while you have it, it’s best to love it and care for it and fix it when it’s

broken and heal it when it’s sick.  That’s true for marriage and old cars

and children with bad report cards and dogs with bad hips and aging parents.

You keep them because they’re worth it, because you’re worth it.

Some things you keep.  Like a best friend that moved away or a classmate,
you grew up with.  There are just some things that make life important…
people you know are special…and you KEEP them close!