Parsnips and Homesickness

Today I drove my new ghetto car (future post, i PROMISE) to TOPS, the grocery store. While I was perusing the aisles, my mind wandered. I started thinking about my mom's birthday, which is October 1st, then I thought about I started thinking of October, which led me to think of Halloween, and then November, which got me thinking of Wyatt's birthday, and Thanksgiving, which is my favorite holiday of the year. It is not celebrated here, of course, because the Mayflower didn't land here, it landed at Plymouth Rock. As far as I know, there isn't one of those around here. :) Then, as I continued to think of our wonderful Thanksgiving, I thought about the special parsnips that Grammy would make just for me. She would grow them faithfully in the ground and then after the first frost, she would dig them up and we would have them fried up with butter, salt and pepper. I even grew some when I had my little community garden in Seattle. It's funny how little memories like that trigger such a response. But there I was, in the middle of the freezer section, when I looked down and saw a frozen bag of parsnips. And I did the only thing reasonable in this situation: I burst into tears. Right there in the middle of the frozen section. Then I looked around, and saw how ridiculous this might seem from an outsider's point of view and I started to laugh. So there I was, laughing AND crying in the middle of the frozen veggie section of the small grocery store. I'm sure anyone walking past thought I had just gotten out of the loony bin, but I didn't care. I bought those parsnips and they are now happily in my freezer whenever I need them again.