September 10th, 2025

The leaves are beginning to change color. Temperatures are getting cooler. Dew gathers daily on the windshield of my car and a morning walk through the grass will get your shoes wet. As chilly weather sets in, so does the desire for a fire in the woodstove and a pot of chili simmering in the kitchen.
I like to make big pots of chili. We’ll eat some for our meal, put some in the refrigerator for lunches the next day, and a few quarts in the freezer for another day.
Through a combined series of misfortunes, distractions and sheer stupidity, I managed to burn two gallons of homemade chili in the pot. Sometimes I can recover the chili in the pan if I don’t disturb the burned chili on the bottom. But, this time, I really scorched it and that nasty charred flavor made its way through the whole batch.
I threw away the chili and scraped an inch of burned beans, meat and tomatoes from the bottom of the pan, exposing the hard, burned black stuff. Charcoal had nothing over the floor of this pan. I put some soap and water in the pan and left it to soak overnight.
I went back the following day and looked into the pan to assess the damage and see if the pot could be recovered. I tried to scrape the bottom with a spoon, but it was so charred I decided to just throw the pot away.
That’s when it happened. I heard my mother’s voice saying, “Don’t you dare! You get over to that sink and clean that pan right now.”
I sassed right back, "You can't tell me what to do. I am an adult now!" As I scrubbed on the pan, I tried to reason with her, “Look at this mess – let’s just throw the pan away and get another one.”
It was a fairly expensive pot, a nice stainless steel ten-quart pot with sturdy side handles and a vented glass lid. My wife bought it for me as a gift. I was sure it was ruined. “Keep scrubbing.” I heard the voice say.
“It’s not coming out” was my plea of defense.
“Use Comet” she replied.
I argued; “but it’s…”
“SCRUB!”
I scrubbed and scrubbed that pan with Comet and a green scratchy pad. I rinsed the pan, feeling it was clean enough and started to put it in the strainer, when the voice clarified “It is not clean. There is still more in the pan.” I thought again about throwing it out, but I was certain she was watching from somewhere around the corner to assure that didn’t happen.
After the final scrubbing, I rinsed the pan. I saw the bottom of a once again shiny stainless-steel pan. I am sure I felt a warm hand on my shoulder as I heard a softer voice asking; “Now, aren’t you glad you didn’t throw away that perfectly good pan?”
I took a quick look over my shoulder. No one was there. My fingertips were tender from scrubbing with the abrasives; my wrist ached a bit from the odd angle used reaching into the deep pot. I quipped to myself, “People should not be able to talk from the grave.”
The voice replied, “I heard that, too.”
As I dried the pan I thought about how much I miss those days in the kitchen with my mom and the lessons she taught me. They were lessons about cooking and cleaning, right from wrong, living, loving and believing.
It’s been over 25 years now since she passed away. From time to time, she still stops into my kitchen, offering me some remedial training. You know, people like Mom, who passed before us, don’t really talk from the grave – but they do continue to speak through the heart.
Melissa walked into the kitchen. I smiled showing her the pan and proudly said, “Look, I got it clean.”