My candy thermometer broke last night as I was making a batch of prickly pear hard candy. Well, the truth is I don’t know when it broke. I was working on several things at once in my kitchen and the candy was near the end of my list. I got it started and watched the temperature climb– slowly as it does– and didn’t notice the glass top was missing until I was at 300 degrees and getting ready to pour the candy into the pan to cool.
While this might seem like a silly thing to blog about, the thermometer belonged to my mom and it was the only one I’ve used to make the prickly pear hard candy.
I don’t know why she had one– what she had made so she bought one– and I don’t think I ever used it until I started making prickly pear candy several years ago. I felt a little irritated, knowing I’d have to create another batch because I don’t know if the candy had glass or not, but mostly because that was a connection to Mom.
Yet something else occurred to me– perhaps this letting go was about more than using her candy thermometer. Instead, Mom is saying, “It got you started making the candy, but get a new one. You’re going to be making more candy and you need a new one.”
Many times we get upset that the objects that tie us to our loved ones get ruined, broken, or whatever. Yet those things happen so we can go forward, so we can let go, but mostly so we can let something greater come to us.