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Dear Reader,
I'm still in the process of finishing my first book, but after reading today's mail I think I may have come up with the title for my second book, Things That Remind Me of My Mother.
The emails I've been receiving from readers are as humorous as the column I wrote about my mother and her Styrofoam collection. If you missed it, go to: http://tinyurl.com/67p2qg
From my Email Bag:
"Suzanne, My parents also visit the Senior Center in our small town for lunch three days a week. And like your Mother, my parents are the proud recipients of the leftovers. When you open their refrigerator, there must be 50 little cartons of milk, apple juice, orange juice, and prune juice all squeezed between stacks of those dreaded styrofoam containers filled with baked beans, cooked spinach, canned peas, and sliced beets. Once a week, Dad will scrape all the food from their resting spots in those containers into his compost pit. Then Mom washes them up and stores them away with all their 'Styro buddies'. 'You never know when you will need to feed your neighbors.'
So if anyone needs enough environmentally unfriendly containers to feed a small army, I know where they can get them!" --Anne Schneider
"Dear Suzanne, When I read your letter in this morning's email, I had a lump in my throat and a smile on my face at the same time. I had one of those mothers too. Only my mother would put that dab of five green beans into a little bowl (that had to be washed, not thrown away!) with a little square of Saran Wrap on top. Then when she ate that bit of leftover, she would wash the dish AND the Saran Wrap, laying the Saran Wrap over a glass on the counter to dry. It was so dependable, there was always Saran Wrap drying in her kitchen somewhere. And did it stop her that it lost its "cling" after the washing? No way! She would just dig into the endless supply of rubber bands to affix it to the bowl the next time." --Mary Lynne McLintock
"Suzanne, Your article about your mom's styrofoam container collection struck a chord with our family. My parents also came from the 'waste nothing' generation (and a lot of it rubbed off on me, I'm afraid!) like your mom, my mom had a styrofoam container collection as well. She and my father lived in a very nice stepped care facility in New Jersey and would eat at least one meal a day in a common dining room with their friends, where they were allowed to carry extras back to their apartments. My father died about seven years ago, and then my mother died about one year ago. In the weeks after her death we had to clean out her closets in order to vacate her apartment. We found a treasure trove of neatly stacked and bagged styrofoam containers in her main hallway closet. The deeper we dug, the more bags of styrofoam containers we found. We finally thought we had them all, but as we moved on to other rooms, each closet yielded up more and more bags of stacked styrofoam, some even with stacked lids. They were so neatly preserved that at first we thought they were brand new, but upon closer inspection we noticed that here and there, a few revealed persistent coffee and food stains. So in the interest of public health and practicality we jettisoned the entire styrofoam collection, gradually, over the course of several days. And to think that it wasn't just my mother who had a penchant for hanging on to that perfectly good, only-used-once styrofoam! Thanks for resurrecting a funny memory!" Best regards, your friend --David
Thanks for sharing your stories and thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.
Suzanne Beecher
Suzanne@DearReader.com
http://www.DearReader.com
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