This thought began because my dishwasher wouldn’t start – it’s less than 4 years old. I emptied it and hand washed all the dishes because it was going to take a few days to get the repairman here. Washing dishes takes me back to my childhood and my early married days when I didn’t have a dishwasher. I looked around my kitchen and saw my old friends, the pieces I can always rely on.

First, there is the old wooden spoon that was a wedding gift as part of a kitchen shower package. I’ve been using this spoon for over 58 years and it never lets me down. I have other spoons, but this one just feels right. I have stirred so many things with it and it just keeps going.

In the drawer was the hand mixer that I was also given as a wedding gift. For the first few years of my married life, this is what I used to make cookies, cakes, mashed potatoes, whatever needed mixing. I only use it about once a year now – to beat eggs to add to the German Chocolate Cake mixture for my husband’s birthday, which we celebrate even though he’s been gone a long time. The beaters don’t always stay in as well, but it functions, as it has for over 58 years.

The writing on the front says it all for a 1966 miracle appliance. It has done its job.

When we had been married two or three years, my husband gave me my KitchenAid mixer for Christmas. I was so excited as I had used my mother’s growing up. Unfortunately, my husband took my excitement to mean I liked getting appliances, so he was shocked at my lack of enthusiasm when he gave me an electric floor cleaner for another Christmas. He learned. Anyway, this gem is still working and is my old reliable in the midst of all the newer gadgets around.

The life this mixer has had. The dozens of cookies, the cakes (you can tell I like to bake most), all the recipes we have tried. This is the mixer that my children used as they learned to cook growing up. Here’s my middle daughter. I promise she’s not this messy now, but this is a good representation of her then.

All of my three girls learned to cook, but my son was the one who really took to it. Here is how I found him when he tried to do it without me.

Years later, after he had been treated for cancer and lost his ability to speak clearly, I told him to find something he loved doing. He went to culinary school to learn real baking skills and worked in a wonderful bakery in Seattle. This kid, who hated getting up early, went to work at 4 a.m. every day to bake wonderful cookies, cakes, tarts, pies. I snapped a picture of him when I visited once.

Having my old mixer around is a sure way to unlock more memories of my children and grandchildren waiting to lick the beaters or help make their treats. At this point, it’s a race to see if my mixer lasts longer than I do, but I’m planning to win. No matter what, those memories will last me forever.