How a Pot Made Me Rethink My Life

When we got married, we were gifted a massive pot.  I mean massive.  20 quarts.  I knew what it was for, but it sort of seemed like a waste.  Over the last almost five years, it’s mostly been a project just to find a place to store it.  I’ve used it as storage.  I used it for the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge.  But I honestly never thought I’d find a reason to use it in the way it was intended.  How was it intended?

Well, I’m Italian.  And Italians are meant to make enough pasta on a Sunday to feed an army.  But it’s just the two of us.  I’ll never need this.  And yet, I held on to it because it felt like an abomination to my heritage to get rid of it.

Well yesterday, I dug it out of the tiny little storage closet and scrubbed it.  I filled it with many quarts of water and nearly strained a muscle carrying it over to the stove.  And then I poured two pounds of pasta into it.

It seems like such a simple thing.  Cooking Sunday supper.  But if I look back over the last four years and 51 weeks, it strikes me as important.  Because the truth is, I honestly couldn’t see this part of our lives when I opened that pot all those years ago.  I could only see us exactly as we were.  I had no idea what the twists and turns were that our lives would take.  And I certainly couldn’t see all the people that would eventually become so important.

So when I opened that pot, I saw it as useless.  A burden.  Unimportant.  But yesterday, I was so thankful we had it.  I couldn’t imagine making supper for that many people without it.

And that makes me think about all the other gifts we’ve been given in our lifetime that we once might have seen as useless.  That piece of advice.  That offer to lend a hand.  That connection to someone you couldn’t understand.  And how in time their purpose becomes important.  Something you couldn’t ever see coming, and there you are armed with the tools to be prepared.

Because that’s how it all goes, really.  You think you have your life figured out when you’re twenty two.  You’ve got a ring on your hand and plans to move to another state.  You’re steadfast with dreams and big ideas.  But you can’t see the life that’s ahead of you.  Not really, any way.

And that makes me wonder about what’s ahead.  Not in an eager, I’m ready for the next step sort of way.  Just more of a simple curiosity.  I didn’t see this coming, this life.  I didn’t know that last nearly five years were just a perfectly choreographed dance to bring us to this point.  But now I know that we’re still dancing, following the path to wherever we’re meant to be.