Unsolicited Advice from Miss C
Greetings Fair Readers,
What is the best life advice you have ever received? I remember sitting in my Gram’s’ trailer, I was 11 or 12 years old. I was crying over a lost friendship. My best friend had just given a letter explaining why she didn’t want to be my friend anymore. She said that she couldn’t be friends with me anymore because she wanted to be popular and was never going to be cool if she stayed friends with me. To say I was destroyed was an understatement, I think this is also the first moment I realized that I was not in fact, cool. I wasn’t angry, but in a few paragraphs, my self-esteem was bashed. My Grams listened to me cry for about an hour, and then she called me to her kitchen table and told me she needed my help making her famous potato salad. I didn’t really want to help, I really just wanted to lay on the couch and feel bad. But that option was not on the table. So, for the next hour we cut vegetables together and prepared to mix the ingredients. I kept asking… “how much of this? How much of that?” She laughed at me and said she didn’t really know, that’s why she needed me to be her special taster. So together, we tasted our progress several times, and the end result was perfect! As we sat at the kitchen table enjoying our spoils, Grams said, “You know, everyone who makes this recipe makes it a little differently, because we all taste things a little different. This potato salad is perfect for us because we made it together, Tim and Cindi might not like it at all. But that’s okay, because we worked hard to create something. We put everything we had into making it the best we know how. We love the result and enjoy it, so does it really matter if Tim and Cindi don’t like it? Does that make this potato salad less yummy?”
At the time, I mostly thought we were talking about potato salad. But the potato salad talk turned into the best life advice I have ever received. Grams showed me that it was okay for everyone to not like the same things, and if you always put your best forward, that is perfect. I will never make everyone happy, and it’s not my job to do so. But it is my job to learn, try, give, and love. The only things in life I can control are my own actions and reactions.
Thanks Grams, you are forever in my heart.
Blessings,
—Miss C
