Tiny Tongs

She was born many years ago, back in 1929 on a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific ocean.  She was the youngest of thirteen siblings and she grew up knowing how to dry fish by hanging them on a fence in the sun and wind.  

During the war, she met and fell in love with a soldier.  After Cupid's arrow had pierced her heart, she left her beautiful island paradise, her parents and siblings and made a new home in the mid west between the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers.  There she raised her family along with working a full time job. When her three children were young, she took them back to the islands to meet their grandmother.  It was the last time she saw her mother.  She was a wife, a mother, a grandmother and when she became a great grandmother, she named herself  "TuTu".

This feisty little Polynesian woman, my mother-in-law, knew no strangers.  She took people into her home and treated them like family.  She cooked the most magnificent meals and the absolute best macadamia nut cookies to be found anywhere.  She loved country music and she and her husband traveled far and wide to concerts of their favorite bands.  She always cooked a plethora of goodies for the band and was most welcome on many tour buses.

After retiring, she began to go home to the beautiful island of Maui each year.  When I became a part of this family, this was a most exciting time for me because she always brought me a gift.  It doesn't matter how old I become, getting a gift is just a special treat.  Getting a gift from the middle of the ocean made it even better.

On one of her last trips, she brought me a pair of small stainless steel tongs.  I was grateful on the outside, but on the inside I was not.  Stainless steel tongs!?!  What was I supposed to do with a pair of tiny tongs?  Where was the cup with a humpback whale on the side?  Or the black sand from the beach?  What about the giant beach towel that had "Aloha" printed on it or even a tee-shirt?   She said the tongs were all the rage on the island and everyone had a pair.  I thought that someone could have my pair and tossed them in the kitchen utensil drawer.

Those tiny tongs have become my most favorite tool in the kitchen.  Their original hinge has been replaced with a piece of bent,  heavy gauge wire, but they still work just like they did when they were new.  I have even purchased two more pair, but they are not as small, nor as handy as the pair I was so ungrateful for.  All the other island souvenirs have gone by the wayside and only the  tongs remain.  Each time I pick them up, I think of "TuTu" and all the lifetime of memories she left us with and I give a small, silent prayer of thanks for those tiny tongs.