Passing of the Pans
by Chaplain Scott Jimenez, (1997, MDiv), BCC, Staff Chaplain (125), West Texas Veterans Health Care System
We went to visit my mother, and as usual, upon our leaving, she wanted to send us with something, typically food. I don’t mind because she has always been a great cook. Almost all of my memories of growing up seem to be wrapped in food. She showed her love with food. It became her vocation, but it was always her avocation. This time was different. When I unpacked the trunk to find what my mother had put in there, I found food, but I also found her big pans. As I looked at these big pans, I thought about her, and about this gift. What was the symbolism? Does she just want an excuse to get new pans? Or, is she giving them to me because her cooking days are over? Because so much of our shared past revolved around wonderful food, is this a way of saying, with finality, that she feels her days are numbered?
Is the passing of these pans a passing of a generation? Am I now to be the patriarch, the oldest surviving member of my clan? Are there new responsibilities? Like many things in our lives, sentinel events do not come with an answers book. It is muddle as you go. Think of becoming a spouse, or a parent, or a grandparent. (Perhaps grandparenting does come with an answer book: it is etched on our minds and hearts what we would do better as parents, if we had to do it over.) We learn as we go. We make mistakes, and learn from them. How do you get good experience? From bad experience, which you vow never to repeat.
It wasn’t until my mother passed me the pans that I realized she was, how should I say it delicately, not young. It stands to reason: I’m a grandparent. But to see her age meant that I had also aged. And my mind fought to be young, to do all the things I used to able to do, but with more recovery time. The passing of the pans made me realize that the seasons of our lives are worth entering into, and passing through. For example, I made a promise to my wife that I would “get old and wrinkly with you”, that we would go through the seasons in our lives together.
I am at the tail end of the Baby Boomer generation (I’ve always hated that term!); this means that our parents are getting older. Has there been “a passing of the . . .” event in your life? For me it was pans, for you it might be tools, heirlooms, furniture, or something else. Do we recognize these as a passing from one generation to another? Do we have a responsibility to be the bridge between the generation that preceded us and that which follows us? How do we deal with that? And, when will you be ready to pass the pans?
Pans are ok and kool;but my family tradition has been to pass down cherished firearms.I have an old rifle from my great grandfather;will pass this,plus others,to my son and grandson.CHAPLAIN (MAJOR) DAVE PLUNKETT,USA,Ret.
For us, with my old man at least, it was books. Viejo has been handing out his books for decades, but he’s hanging on to his folio editions of Twain and Heinlein for when he’s “swept into the bosom of Abraham.