So it is National Eat your Jello Day. I have three stories associated with Jello.
The first one is my personal memory of Jello. Several times I have written about the way we ate as a family growing up; simple, home-cooked, delicious meals around the kitchen table. We did not have dessert every evening but when we did it was pudding or a made-from-scratch cake or Jello. It was often red Jello. My mama would add a can of fruit cocktail so it was full of fun, chunky, varied pieces of fruit. It was so good!
My second thought about Jello is from one of my favorite movies, My Best Friend’s Wedding. I am not completely sure why I love this movie. It does not have a 100% happy ending, but there are sweet parts and funny parts and sad parts and the music is wonderful.
In one scene, Julia Roberts’ character, who is a food critic by profession, is telling Cameron Diaz’s character that she is creme brûlée and when you are creme brûlée, you cannot be Jello. Diaz’s character is upset, crying that she wants to be Jello. Roberts’ character forcibly tells her that she will NEVER be Jello.
Who knew being Jello was such a great thing? You have to see the movie, trust me.
And third, today, while driving home from running errands, I heard a woman on the radio talking about the importance of instilling values into your very young children. She stated that it is not too far fetched to say that what a child is at age seven, is the adult he or she will be. Wow. No pressure.
She went on to say that as a young mother, she would often take her children to the mall early in the day to walk the little ones in the stroller and let the bigger ones walk along side and look at all the stores. One day when she was there, she saw a large sign hanging from the ceiling of the mall which stated this:
“A child’s mind is like Jello. Put the good things in before it sets.”
That impacted her greatly. She realized the major importance of being with her children from day to day to day and teaching them strong values and lessons.
I could not agree more. My little ones are all grown up into wonderful adults. I am so grateful for them; their love and care and their friendship. They are very dear to me.
There are, however, days that I would love to do it all over again, to be better at it. But in spite of my shortcomings, and by God’s grace and mercy, the good things were put in before they were “set”.
But really, we are all, regardless of age, still ‘setting’ to some degree. We can still put good things in, even if we wobble and jiggle just a bit.