Is It Too Late?

I love to cook. Yesterday, I made bread for the first time in my life. It turned out pretty good, and so I decided to make my wife some homemade cinnamon rolls today. What was supposed to last for two days isn't going to make it until midnight! I think maybe I have discovered a new calling. If you are family and reading this, don't buy those new pants for me for Christmas quite yet. You may need to buy a bigger size!

As I was putting the ingredients together, waiting for the yeast, warm water and sugar to do its thing, then kneading the dough (I don't knead this), the smell took me back to when I was in school. Our favorite meals were the ones whose smells permeated the entire building about an hour before lunch-the smell of yeast rolls. I then began to consider how long it was taking me to make my two loaves of bread and did some quick calculations to derive how long it must have taken the lunchroom ladies to prepare 600 rolls. I figured they must have come in about 3AM in the morning to have all of them ready by 11:30, the first lunch shift.

Do you remember your school days and all the terrible things you said about the mystery meat, slop, etc., not to mention the ways we referred to those little old ladies that suffered through the abuse we handed to them? Have you ever tried to cook meals for a camp, or a retreat, or anything over six people? Are you now ashamed? I am.

On reflecting on my bad, unacceptable behavior I thought the next time I am back in Georgia I should go to my old high school and apologize to all of them. Then reality set in, and I realized that since I am almost 60 years old, most, if not all, of those cooks are gone forever. It was too late. It would be impossible to right the wrongs of the past.

I remember another person who treated me kindly when I was a teenager. His name was Howard Almon, and he used to pay me $.50/hr to help clear land, put up barbed wire fences and anything else that he needed. I should have paid him since I had this habit of breaking handles out of sledgehammers, hoes, axes and shovels, but he never said a thing to me. Just bought more handles and kept them on standby.

When I was in my mid 20's, I realized what a blessing he had been to me and how much he had taught me about responsibility, good work ethics and life. He had moved to Alabama by this time, and I went to a mutual friend to get an address. I wanted to go and personally thank him for all that he had done for me during those early years of life. Alas, he had died of cancer a few years earlier. I was too late.

So, why am I telling you all this? I think that we should take the time to consider those who have spoken into our lives and make a special effort to tell them how much we appreciate all they have done for us. Perhaps, like myself, you find that they have passed on, but there is still something you can do. Go to those who are making a difference in other's lives right now, like the cooks in your kid's school, or the teachers that teach our children, or the firemen and policemen that protect us, or ministers, and are not receiving the gratitude and praise they deserve from the ones they serve. After all, when the ones they are serving now finally wake up years from now and realize what wonderful people they were, it might be too late. Stop the cycle. Show someone you care.