With Age Comes Wisdom

My Grandma Tebo lived with us for a couple of years after Grandpa Tebo died.  The three things I remember most about her time with us were watching TV, going to church and baking. Her favorite television shows were Lawrence Welk, Gunsmoke and Paladin.  Paladin was really Have Gun Will Travel but she referred to the show by the main character’s name.  I think she fancied him.

My dad drove Grandma, my two sisters and me to church every Sunday. My mom went when it suited her.  Dad dropped us off at the door so Grandma wouldn’t have to walk very far.  I was her escort.  She held my arm as we walked.  Women were expected to wear a hat to church so if Grandma forgot hers, she’d pull a fancy handkerchief from her purse and place it on her head.

That single act of walking her down the aisle made me the envy of all the grandmas in the church.  I never made the cover of Time Magazine as Man of the Year but probably should have.

The most important memory was her baking.  She used a firewood stove all her life until she moved in with us. In our house she was cooking with gas.  She baked miracle after miracle.  Always from scratch.  Never from a box.

She used a baking sifter all of the time. She wanted no lumps or clumps so she sifted things so they were as perfect as they could be.  The only error of her ways was the occasional teeny, tiny, bit of eggshell, but no one minded.

I’ve been thinking about the process of sifting.  If you google it, you’ll find something like this.

Cake flour, almond flour, baking soda, confectioners’ sugar, and cocoa powder tend to form clumps, either in their unopened packages or once they’re exposed to air. Many serious bakers sift their ingredients.   Some have proclaimed, “It’s terrible to skip the sift only to find a pocket of dry cocoa in your cake!” To save repeated sifts, when opening a new box of baking soda, some sift the whole thing and put it into another container. Once that’s done, they don’t have to sift it each time they use it. 

In some instances, sifting is imperative: if your recipe calls for 2 cups of sifted flour (as opposed to 2 cups flower, sifted). The former means that the flour should be measured after sifting, while the later means that it should be measured first and then sifted. The differences in volume are more extreme that you might believe and can make or break some baked goods.

You’re probably wondering why I’m writing about Grandma’s baking as a follow up to a story about sharing information and drawing conclusions.  My main point is simply this: you have to sift through a lot of propaganda and false promises to make an informed decision.  Freedom of speech allows you to speak your mind even if you’re wrong.  Me too.

I know of people that have stopped being friends because of religious or political views.  It’s their way or the highway. They’re intolerant and unforgiving.  I’d contend that if that’s truly the case, they were never a friend in the first place.  Fortunately, most of us accept one another’s flaws. I think the older we get, the more accepting we are.

Oscar Wilde has been credited with the phrase “with age comes wisdom”.   What you may not know is the second half of his observation “but sometimes age comes alone.”  

I don’t know what Oscar was thinking when he made the statement, but I know what I think.  Wisdom is not automatic.  You have to learn from your mistakes in order to be successful.  Making a mistake is not the problem but making the same one over and over again may be.  Learning from your errors brings on the wisdom but sometimes you have to sift through a lot of junk to find the good stuff.