FanStory.com - The Pantry of Cautionary Talesby Liz O'Neill

As I turned from the main highway onto my street my eyes grew large. I lived on a one-way street, therefore had no idea what was happening at the beginning of my street.

As I looked from the left to the right I recognized the crew who took apart old buildings. They were just one lawn over from my house. The fellow was taking down a house with siding from the era I was looking for.

It was perfect, my pantry wouldn’t appear added on. It would look as if it had been there for nearly fifty years. I cut a deal with him. He gave me a figure and instructed me to take what I needed of siding and boards. I could not hold my joy and excitement. Then the work began.

Every night after I got home from work I’d drag boards to my box garden and hammer out nails. I lugged board after board across our straw-thick backyards, until I had most of the available supply. I wanted some of the wide boards, but they were not in the buy.

I thrilled when I found a few square-headed nails in the the old wide boards. If any fell out of the wide boards, they were mine. Some floated to the ground after I pounded them to dropping out. What beautiful old boards they came from, across the centuries. They would match the square nails already in the cross beams of my house from early 1900.

My wonderful carpenter suggested some of his pine boards for the floor in which he could use the square-headed nails for effect. He informed me we would soon run out of wood for the shelves and ceiling.

The following day after I contacted the same fellow to purchase more wood a new truckload arrived. I was elated to see the load consisted of authentic barn boards.
As I studied them I was ecstatic to know they were mine. They were truly beautiful and I was tickled to envision what exquisite shelves they would make.

When I had to move, my pantry was the most difficult thing to leave behind. It was elegant. No one climbed the shelves in that pantry like we did in the one from our childhood home. This impish activity led to another cautionary tale in our lives, especially for Nike.

*****An Earlier Pantry

Our mother couldn’t watch us constantly, even though it would have been a good idea. We’d always been curious as to what goodies were on those shelves in our large pantry. There were six compelling shelves to explore.

I did the climbing and Nike did the coaching. The first five shelves were a disappointment to both of us. Ah, but there was a little bottle of something on the top shelf.

I showed Nike a few things on the lower ones. There was really nothing of interest for either of us. He encouraged me to go higher. I was excited to climb to the highest shelf I'd ever been.

We were really going to find stuff we may never have seen before. Our sometimes dangerous ADD, Attention Deficit Disorder captured our attention. We spotted it on the last level at the same time. It was a brown bottle of something. We wondered if the stuff inside the bottle was brown or if it was just the color of the bottle. We would not rest until we discovered the answer to our puzzle.

Of course, Mother had chosen the highest shelf in the pantry to safely store the little bottle of medicine. Being so high, she hadn’t seen a need to secure the cap. She knew how to carefully lower the bottle when needed for little emergencies.

The irony was something used for a mishap here or there mushroomed into a full-flung crisis, with our first introduction to the small-town hospital. As we already know, this was the first of many visits from us and our neighborhood.

I, slowly stretching on tiptoes, lifted the tiny brown bottle down so Nike could get a closer look to inspect just what that spellbinding bottle was. Enraptured with what I was carefully grasping and excited to investigate for myself I was hurrying a little more than was wise.

As I tipped the bottle, the top fell off and the liquid inside spilled, covering Nike’s face. We were lucky only a few drops went into his eye.

I can still picture him standing in his roomy hospital crib, with a brownish-red stain down one side of his face.

*******

The Kitchen

As a child, I loved coming into the kitchen after school. There was always a pan of cake waiting to greet me. It was one of the surer things in my life. It was usually unfrosted. Mother had long ago realized if the cake were left unfrosted, it lasted the whole day as opposed to a frosted cake lasting an hour.

This didn’t matter to me, it did the job. Mother was numb when she made it and I was numb when I ate it. Mother didn’t seem to be able to do two things at one time and I was always setting myself up for rejection by trying to tell Mother something of dire importance while she was cooking or washing dishes.

As I got older and was washing the dishes my ADD took over. Looking out the window daydreaming, Mother would hip me out of the way and say, "Never mind I'll do it." The Sisters I lived with, in the small group living house, used to tell me, while drying the dishes, “We’ll be back when you’re finished.” Hmm, I wonder why.

This pattern has turned toward my good fortune. When my mother was deciding whether she should try to live on longer with her cancer or move on. I gave her permission to let go and move on.

The following day I went to say goodbye to her before her surgery for one of many tumors, she was filled with cancer. She had obviously been thinking about our previous day’s conversation and had something to say.