Think about this . . .

Every Belief System tells us to keep our mind One Pointed, and in Meditation I do fairly well, but when I’m doing some everyday task like, well, like frying onions as the first step in making a Stew, it’s a different story.

A day or so ago I tried to keep track of my mind, but it’s an impossible task. I traveled back a century or so, the other side of the world, visited with people I’ve not seen in decades, and all the while my hands were frying onions mixed with a few red pepper slices.

My mind, I found, is not only multi-layered, but has more lanes of travel than an octopus has arms.  In fact two or three octopi. Stay with me, and if you think I should be in some doctor’s care, don’t tell me. I’m happy as I am.

Frying onions is a no-brainer, but if you don’t keep your eyes on the skillet, they’ll burn, the flavor ruined and it’s back to the beginning. So, while my hands were glued to the stove, my mind was figuring what odds and ends were in the freezer, purposely saved to be part of such a stew..

First to mind was a bag filled with veggies which were to go into a Frittata that Ina Garten, TV’s ‘Barefoot Contessa’ told about, and immediately I began wondering why she’s no longer on TV and what she’s doing.

Stir the onions, Ethel, enjoy the aroma, think about Ina, but keep stirring.

The Contessa was Gram’s sort of cook, always open for changes to old standbys and I miss her friendly face and wish Gram could have seen her program. I’ve tried to ask, but find there are dozens of ways to reach the Food Channel to buy their offerings, but no matter how you look, there’s no address to ASK, and get an answer.

However, within a moment, Ina was gone and I’m sitting on Gram’s padded kitchen radiator watching the beloved woman at her shrine, the kitchen stove.

But I’ve Mind Traveled, to both New York, Florida and next door to Gram, and the onions haven’t yet even started to color, only wilt, but I stir them and think of Stan, a man I once knew who loved fried onions and how the size of the skillet he used amazed me. Suddenly I was in his kitchen, laughing over things the two of us found amusing and wondering where life has taken him. And then, in the next instant, in Sedonia, Arizona at a meditation meeting also with him. Good man.

Then quickly, I OFF’d the stove switch, answered the doorbell, and glanced at a couple of tall bushes that I had not wanted planted there, and while saying NO to the seller-at-the-door, I was silently reviewing the old ‘bush’ debate with the long gone people who again stood there. What a waste of time, but for one sec there they were again.

Back to kitchen, switched the stove back ON, and though gone but a moment or two, I’d suddenly remembered I’d have to run to the store for a few items. For my stews are different each time I make one, and how could it be otherwise, for my freezer and refrigerator are filled with different foods each time I get in a stew mood.

Which switches me to Seattle, thanking my niece Sylvia Christensen for how she has added samples of wonderful veggies for my freezer shelves and stews.

Yeah, my mind travels and if you know Ethel even a little, you also know I constantly visited with The Source to give thanks for the miracles that are in my kitchen, and my life. And then there’s Mama again, thinking she might have a hard time catching on to today’s methods, but she’d adapt.

Quick thinker, my Mom. And though she’s been in The Next Room for decades, we visited again, and, just like that, my sister Bernice and our Dad were here too, coming to enjoy the aroma and see what was ‘cooking’.

Mind Traveling is one of my best ways to visit. Oh, you do it too? Yeah, we all do, only do it so quickly there is no way we could write it all down. And I wonder if those I visited with also do the same thing?

Bet they do. They know very well what it’s like to be ‘just human’. See, they’ve been here, and done this. So, bye for now and give me a grin if, by chance, you Mind Travel to my kitchen to smell the onion aroma. You’re more than ‘Welcome’.