I Have Become My Mother

It has happened.

Despite years of resistance, denial and possibly a little eye-rolling, I have become my mother.

I save rubber bands. Not all rubber bands, mind you. I do have standards. But a perfectly good rubber band? You don't throw that away. It goes in the drawer with the other 147 perfectly good rubber bands.

And pens.

If a bank, insurance agent, doctor's office or local business puts its name on an ink pen and leaves it sitting there for customers, I consider that an invitation. Thank you very much. I'll give it a good home. My mother would be proud.

The evidence has been piling up for some time, but apparently I wasn't paying attention.

Recently, I started saving celery tops in the freezer for making broth. Then I found myself wondering whether carrot tops could go in there, too. I now have a freezer bag specifically designated for vegetable scraps.

A freezer bag for vegetable scraps.

Young Me would not recognize this woman. Young Me bought broth at the grocery store. She threw celery tops in the garbage. She probably threw away perfectly good rubber bands, too. She was reckless.

I've also rediscovered the ancient art of cooking enough food for two meals and freezing half.  Soup especially. And spaghetti sauce.

Why make one pot of soup when you can make one pot of soup and get TWO dinners out of it? This is the kind of logic my mother tried to explain to me decades ago, when I had absolutely no interest in hearing it.  Now when I open the freezer and discover a container of homemade soup I froze three weeks ago I feel as though someone has sent me a present.

From me. To me. And exactly the right size.

Then there are buttons. A button falls off, and I sew it back on. I don't throw the shirt away or give it to Goodwill. I don't announce that the shirt is defective. I don't decide I've been meaning to buy a new one anyway.

I get out a needle and thread. Somewhere, my mother is saying, "Well, of course you do."

I've even become a person who looks at something before throwing it away and thinks:

Could I use this for something?

This is dangerous territory.

This is how you end up with a drawer full of rubber bands, a collection of promotional pens, three containers you're saving because they're "a good size," and frozen vegetable scraps waiting to become chicken broth.

There is, however, a fine line between becoming your mother and becoming a candidate for a television show about hoarding. I'm trying to stay on the correct side of that line. Mostly.

The funny thing is, I used to think all these little habits were about being frugal. Now I think they were about something else, too.

My mother's generation didn't automatically throw things away when they could still be useful. Food wasn't garbage just because it was left over. A missing button didn't make a shirt unwearable. Something free didn't need to be fancy to be useful.

And making tomorrow's dinner while you're making tonight’s? That's not being cheap. That's being smart.

It has taken me only 74 years to figure this out.

So yes, I save rubber bands.

I take the free pens.

I freeze the second batch of soup.

I sew on buttons.

And somewhere in my freezer is a bag of celery tops and other vegetable odds and ends waiting for their moment of glory.

I have become my mother.

And I'm beginning to think that might not be such a bad thing after all.

And yes, if there's nothing stuck to the aluminum foil, I fold it up and use it again.

But I do NOT wash out Ziplock bags.

There have to be boundaries.