"MOM, WHEN YOU DIE..."

I had walked out of the kitchen and towards my bedroom, when I heard my son say "Mom, when you die can I have the spaghetti canister?" We were cooking spaghetti that night and I had put my son on noodle duty.

I suddenly had flashbacks to when I was a young kid and my family would all sit around the kitchen table and each of us siblings would call dibs on something in the house that we wanted when mom and dad were dead. The running joke was I was going to get the motorhome! What a weird game, but I think my parents found it amusing since they didn't have much of any value.

Caught off guard, I asked my son to repeat what he had just said, which he did without hesitation adding "It's vintage, I like it". "It's not vintage" I snapped back. "It's made to look that way. That's why I bought it." "Mom" my son said with a half chuckle and a huff, as if to say "are you kidding me?" "We've had it as long as I can remember and I'm 20 years old". "Oh shit!" I thought, "it is vintage!" I couldn't argue with him at that point, so I merely started to laugh and said "yes, you can have it."

As I laid on my bed waiting for dinner I thought, "Was I really so old that my kids were starting to lay stake to my belongings. Where the hell did time go?" If he was twenty, that made me not far off of fifty. "Jesus" I thought to myself.

I thought of all the dumb sayings I hated as a kid and considered how relevant they had become in recent years..."Life's too short", "Time goes quicker the older you get", "Enjoy your kids when they are little. They grow up fast".

Then I thought of my parents who were quite literally unloading their belongings on us 4 kids and all the grandkids now. They are getting ready to sell the family farm, and all those things were we calling out as "our inheritance" around the table years ago, if they still have those items, we're now the punchline because my parents are handing those exact things over just to watch our faces! Oh how the tables turn....

I'm at the age where things are starting to come full circle, and it some ways it healing. In others it's heart breaking. If I'm getting older, so are my parents, but also so our my kids which means a new generation has been born into our growing family.

But some old traditions never die. The game continues! So little does my young son know, now that he's called it...I'm not waiting until I'm dead! When he moves out this summer, that spaghetti canister is going with him! It's his "inheritance".