Well, That’s a Crock

Crock is a fun word to me. So many applications, and most of them are said with some kind of attitude, which may or may not heighten my appreciation of the word.

This is the one time, however, that it’s not funny or attitudinal. It was tough on me.

This time I mean it in the kitchen way, which if you know me at all you know this is difficult.

Decades ago when I first married, there were so many practical gifts given us, mostly of the kitchen variety. The irony, upon retrospection, is astounding. Many of those gifts went unused and eventually made their way to someone else’s kitchen. But there was one appliance that I absolutely loved and became quite adept at using.

My CrockPot.

Irony at its finest.

I’ve never been a great cook. I can do the task, but have never enjoyed it, therefore I never really became any good at it. Growing up, baking was more of my thing, but one cannot raise a family on creme puffs alone. My poor Mama tried to help, as she is a phenomenal cook and baker, and probably wonders where she went wrong with me, but her attempts were pretty much futile. (And please, to make this sentence Southern appropriate, please pronounce it “few-tile.” Thanks so much) She’d send me recipes every so often. Simple, tasty, quick, because she knew I wasn’t in this for the long haul. None of them really took, until one day when she sent the fateful fax with the most blessed recipe typed on it, and a handwritten note from her that read, “Aunt Freddie’s recipe. Really good.”

Calico Beans.

The universe shifted.

My Aunt Freddie had three constantly-eating boys, so she also knew how to run a kitchen, so I figured the recipe must be trustworthy. And for my Mama to give her seal of approval, well, stop the presses.

So I gave it a try, and blessed behold as Reva would say, it was the tastiest pot of gold I’d ever made.

The family liked it, friends liked it, pot-luck diggers-in liked it, work crew liked it. In fact, the only person to ever not like it is The Lawyer.

Go figure.

But I don’t care. He’s allowed one misstep in life.

There was even this one time at a department-wide pot-luck that one of the bosses grabbed the pot, held it up and hollered, “whoever made this, I need the recipe before you leave. This is the best stuff I’ve ever eaten.”

So there, Lawyer.

Anyhoo. It kinda became my signature dish and everybody seemed to want me to make it.

So, I did.

Baby showers, wedding showers, office parties, church functions, dinner for the week, funeral dinners, post surgeries, babies born – you name it, I took it there. And because it’s a crock pot dish, dumping it into a disposable container to deliver it made it easy on everybody. I never lost a dish, and folks never had to clean and return a dish. Definitely a win-win combo. So that’s what I did.

But then life changed. I no longer seemed to be in a position to need to deliver food, add to the office pot-luck, or throw a shower. The old crock pot was finally getting a little break, as was I. I’m not sure how we both felt about that, but it was what it was, and that’s just how it was.

Now, a little bit about the crock pot. It’s a two-in-one phenomenon. A “Fry Daddy” on the outside, a crock pot on the inside. You see, the outside layer is a non-stick fry daddy deep fryer if the crock is out of it, and the ceramic crock sits down in it if you want to crock. A simple plug-in dial control and you’re ready to go. Because look, this was gifted in 1990, which was a long dang time ago, and that plug-in dial control is still going strong. No digital nothing here, just good old fashioned kitchen appliance magic. A clear glass lid and handles on the side to tote it and I’m in business, y’all. It’s the most awesome thing I’ve ever owned.

But back to life and the no-longer-need for the crocker.

I’m not one to hold on to everything in life. I’m a purger, a quasi-minimalist, a non-packrat. I only keep the most sentimental of the most sentimental. I don’t function well in clutter or piles. Yes, clutter and piles happen, but then I come in like a tornado and purge. And then my mind is clear again. But, when my life took a major shift and I needed to purge everything, there were but a few things I just couldn’t send on their way. The crock was one. And that’s no crock.

As tends to happen, I believe, when one has a major life shift, everything has to go. But I just couldn’t. I gave my kid 99% of my kitchen stuff, all the furniture, and whatever else he and his roommates needed to furnish their dump of a house near campus – but the crock stayed with me. I moved it a few times with my few belongings and thought more than a few times about getting rid of it.

But I just couldn’t.

Then my life shifted again, and suddenly I was living in The Lawyer’s house and didn’t need a thing. A grown man’s fully equipped home didn’t need anything I might bring into it, and yet he lovingly opened the door to anything I felt I needed to contribute to our mutual existence. I moved in and tried my best to gently add my things to his. A few things in a bedroom, a closet in the guest room, he gave me the big closet in our bedroom, and I had a couple things for the kitchen – the crockpot being one of them. Now, he had a crock pot too, but not a two-in-one fry daddy crock pot, mind you. Mine was wayyyyy better than his! But, I was torn. Yes, the crockpot was mine, but it was also an “ours” from before. It was odd bringing a wedding gift from my previous life into the kitchen of my new life. I was trying to just blend in, much like a middle-schooler at a new school who was timid and scared. I didn’t want to offend, but I didn’t want to lose any more of me than I had already lost. I was shredded.

So I called my sister.

I mean, what else does one do when faced with a self-imposed dilemma? My sister knows everything, including, most importantly, how to handle me. Ok, wait. Maybe I didn’t actually call her. Maybe I texted her. I don’t know. It was all blurry with tears. But I vomited my shredded heart onto her. “I’m so torn. I don’t want any remnant from before. I’ve started over, I’ve gotten rid of everything, my life is all new, but I just can’t let it go. This is the stupidest thing ever. It’s just a crock pot. But it’s mine, and I’ve used it maybe hundreds of times to give a hot meal to other people, it’s mine and I just can’t let it go.” So she calmly, gently as always, guided me down off that ledge I had heaved myself upon. “You don’t have to get rid of it, nor do you have to see it as part of your past. It’s yours and you used it to bless other people. See it for what it really is – a tool for you to bless others. You did that – and can continue to do that – with that crock pot. It’s not stupid, it’s not silly, it means something to you. Don’t get rid of it unles you want to. Keep it if you want to. Don’t let anyone else tell you what to do with it. If it means that much to you then by all means, don’t get rid of it.”

My sister is the wisest person I know .

So I puddled up on the kitchen floor, then dried my tears and found a place in a cabinet for that old crock pot to go. Because even though it was an “our” gift, it was ever only used by me, and I used it to gift to others. It has meaning to my heart and deepest soul parts of me, and I get to keep it as long as I wish. And I still get to cry over it if I want to, and maybe I’m crying as I write this but I’ll never tell you. And maybe I haven’t used that crock pot in 6 or 7 or 8 years, but it’s there if I want to. Or maybe it’s just soothing to know that something I used for good is sitting there, tucked away, and I can go look at it on occasion and know that every once in a while I did  something nice for someone. Whatever the case may be, that crock pot heals me and helps me to know… I’m not all bad.