Remember when we didn’t have everything all the time?
Remember when we didn’t mind a little inconvenience?
Remember when things that took a little bit of effort were savoured?
Remember when we were happy to work for the little things that brought us pleasure? Now we seem to expect to have everything we want, all the time, but we have largely forgotten how to appreciate them.
No wonder we have become such consumers…always looking for the thing that will fire up the reward centre of our brain, but it gets harder and harder to achieve that because we don’t have to (or expect to have to) work for anything anymore. So there is less sense of accomplishment.
I was cleaning up some things from the drawer under Gizmo’s cage and got to the almond jar. Almonds have always been a treat for the featherhead. And if you think about it, the strength of that little hooked beak of his is a bit of a marvel.
Could you chew your way into an almond?
He’s only around 130g in body mass, and he could.
He always made it look easy.
He’s pick one up, roll it around a bit in his grip, find the weak point, usually at the tip, and start to pick it away. He’d sit there perched on one foot, the other holding the almond tightly, and make his way in. You’d hear the shell cracking under his intent and, eventually (which wasn’t usually very long) he’d have taken off the entire tip and be happily nibbling his way until the shell was empty. You’d then hear a “thud” as the empty shell hit the bottom of the cage (or the floor).
In the past few years his grip isn’t quite as tight, and I imagine his beak has to feel a bit strained too. I know my joints hurt more than they used to, so presumably his do too. We started cracking them a bit for him, and then just bought him shelled almonds. So this morning I shelled the remaining almonds in his jar since I doubt he will be too keen on working so hard for the treat….particularly when he knows that shelled ones are an option.
But as I was shelling them, using an old nutcracker from my childhood, some other memories and thoughts surfaced.
I remember that, around Christmas time, my mother used to buy a mesh bag of mixed nuts in the shells. There were almonds, walnuts, hazelnuts, pecans, Brazil nuts. She’d put them out in this old wooden dish, which looked like a short piece of a small log…probably because that’s exactly what it was….with a hinged metal nutcracker and several sharp little metal picks that matched. My dad would pick up a big walnut and hold it in the palm of his hand, wrap the nutcracker around it, and close his other hand around the nut and nutcracker while he shattered the shell. He’d put down the nutcracker and pick the nut out of the shell and drop the broken shell bits into a dish.
It all made such a satisfying sound, and I was always fascinated by the shape and contours of both the nut itself, as well as the inside structure of the shell.
I actually never really enjoyed nuts all that much, not the way Dad did.
But looking at the almonds this morning, and cracking them open to pick out the almonds inside, I had a moment of “Oh why am I bothering with this….there is a bag of shelled almonds in the drawer for him…” and it made me realize how much simple happiness we seem to have lost in the name of convenience.
We never used to have all those nuts available all year, they were a seasonal treat, something to look forward to, to share. Like the box of mandarins oranges, individually wrapped in green tissue. And how many other things that used to excite us but are now always available, and have somewhat lost their shine.
We now expect what we once anticipated.
Yet the memory lingers, albeit a bit fuzzily, and when I crack another almond, using Dad’s old nutcracker, the sound brings a smile.
