The food processor that processed holding on and moving on
“Yeah that’s life – old good ones get put to pasture by a ninja.”
Packing, I decided to give away my 25+ year old food processor, a tiny, powerful thing given to me by my mom but rendered obsolete by the gift—also from my mom—of The Ninja, a food processing, blending, chopping multi-faceted gadget she absolutely loves. Her reaction was the quote above—not surprised.
Packing, I sat on my tile floor with a box of keepsakes … those fucking shoeboxes we all keep with letters from past lovers and mementos culled down and culled down and culled down until you’re left with a ridiculous rock painted in the fucking colors you decided to paint your solo apartment after you broke up and both moved out and a declaration—lies, as it were—that you are the only woman he’ll ever love and he’ll marry you if only you’ll give him the chance.
Except that when you give him the chance he says it isn’t the right time.
He was an old, good one, put to pasture by a ninja.
Only this ninja wasn’t a multi-faceted tool, this ninja was the ninja of doubt, the ninja that stole your joy together, the ninja that let you consider the possibility of others, the ninja of fear, the ninja that broke the relationship’s back, the ninja that let you give up.
You hold on to that food processor because it has sentimental value—your MOM gave it to you, after keeping it herself for so many years. You hold on to that food processor because it has a convenience factor—you know exactly how to work it and what it will output. You hold on to that food processor because that’s just what you do—you collect kitchen gadgets.
Until you don’t. Until you’re sitting there on the floor and realize that something different has come along and it doesn’t make the food processor any less valuable, it just makes it unnecessary. And the ninja becomes The Ninja and you’re starting a new shoebox for that multi-faceted tool.