Done Bun Can’t Be Undone

Posted on by stilllearning2b
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(Photo credit: ecstaticist)

I have always been a huge fan of Stephen King. He has a magical way of delving into the wonderment and wisdom inherent in the ten-year-old’s mind which paints a world we all remember yet no longer are privy to as adults. He carries this slightly off perspective through his adult characters as well, showing us a perspective we all know yet seem to forget.

His book Insomnia was published my junior year of high school, during that grey period where you simultaneously straddle the worlds of childhood and adulthood. One line from that book stayed in my mind for the entire year, most likely due to the sing-songy quality with which my internal voice read it.

Done bun can’t be undone.

I never really thought what that line meant until just recently. Literally, once the bread is baked, there is no going back to the dough.

How much effort do we waste in our lives trying to undo done buns? How often do we lament “the way things were” and we try to navigate back to them? How much time do we spend replaying past decisions and mentally taking new paths?

I find it interesting that the book was released the same year I began dating my now ex-husband. Those fateful words were spooling through my head during our courtship. Done bun can’t be undone.

Rather than fight against the past, I have learned to accept it. Would I do it over again the same way? It doesn’t matter. I don’t have that option. Instead, I try to take the past as a starting point.

A done bun can’t be undone, but it can be enjoyed with a pat of butter and a hot mug of tea.

Wisdom From Grandma’s Fridge

Posted on by stilllearning2b

My grandmother loves pictures. Her entire house is a scrapbook, a display of photographs spanning decades, cataloging the lives of those she loves.  Her fridge is the ever-changing display of the pictures she wants to look at most.  I don’t get to grandma’s nearly as often as I would like, but when I do, I always look at the pictures on the fridge to quickly catch up.

It has been interesting to see my own picture evolve over the years, especially the ones taken with others.  When I was a child, many of my pictures contained one or both of my parents or one of my grandparents.  Later, many of them featured my cousins.  In my latter teenage years, my ex began to enter the pictures.  I remember two of her fridge in particular: one taken in the airport when we were departing from a trip to visit my grandmother and another from when I was awarded teacher of the year.

When he left, obviously those pictures had to be replaced.

The first replacement was taken with the police officer who arrested my ex-husband.  It was somewhat surreal to see that photo surrounded by pictures of family.  But that man became family of a sort that summer, as he looked out for me  as family would.  This picture was taken less than two weeks after he left.  My ex was in jail at the time of the photo.

The next replacement was a picture taken with my current partner (at a baseball game, one of my new passions) after we had only been seeing each other a few weeks.

“Grandma, I exclaimed!,” shocked at seeing his face up there so soon. “It has only been a few weeks; isn’t it kind of soon to have his picture up.”

“It’s not like it’s up there with glue,” she calmly replied with a sly smile.

That day I received a bit of Zen wisdom from my grandmother and her fridge.  Nothing is permanent; everything will change.

I am happy to report that almost four years later, the picture has been replaced, but the man in it has not.