Cabbage Soup and Bright Sides

My Grandpa used to say, “You can boil a rock and call it supper, if you look at it the right way.”

He said that one night during the winter of ’69, when all we had for dinner was cabbage soup, dry biscuits, and apple butter—rationed between six people like it was gold dust. And somehow, he still smiled when he said it.

That kind of “look-on-the-bright-side” attitude ran in my family like cowlicks and crooked toes. My dad was the same way.

When the well pump busted and we had to draw water by hand, he just shook his head and said, “Guess we’ll all get strong forearms and fresh air.”

I think that was the year I learned to cuss under my breath.

So, naturally, I tried to inherit their sunny-side-up gene, even when I read the Nevada Territorial News this morning and felt like someone had swapped out my morning coffee for a ladle of ice water. No taxes on tips and overtime? Well, that’s nice for folks still working for their supper.

For me, I’m pulling from the piggy bank I spent fifty-plus years stuffing—only to find Uncle Sam reaching in for another fistful. They used to say you can’t tax what’s taxed already, like reheating leftovers three times and still calling it fresh.

But here we are—paying on Social Security, which we already paid into, and then we’ll pay again when we spend it on anything with a barcode or a sales tag. I sat there scratching my head, remembering what had changed since 1983 when Reagan still smiled like a man with a plan and Social Security wasn’t a third-hand coat.

Anyway, I tried to think positively, like my folks would’ve. The bright side. The upside. The sliver of pie crust clinging to the plate. I even tried to imagine Grandpa in the afterlife, shaking his head at the idea of taxing the same dollar three times. Probably laughing. Probably stirring a pot of invisible cabbage soup and calling it “retirement stew.”

I went outside and sat on the porch, letting the afternoon breeze chase off the frustration. Our neighbor Cleo—who wears a sunhat shaped like a UFO—came shuffling up the path with a grin like she knew a joke I didn’t.

“You see the news?” she asked.

I nodded. “Saw it. Read it. Digested it poorly.”

She chuckled and dropped a sack of tomatoes from her garden onto my lap. “Well, we’ll just keep planting. And hoping. And paying, I suppose.”

“Even when we can’t afford the seeds,” I said.

“Especially then,” she said, like she’d already rehearsed it.

I sliced one of those tomatoes and ate it with a sprinkle of salt. It tasted like sunshine and hard work. And somehow, that old family lesson—look what you are getting, and don’t worry about what you’re not—started to take hold.

It doesn’t make the taxes go away. It doesn’t fix Medicaid or put peanut butter in every lunch pail. But it does remind me that if I can still sit on my porch, share tomatoes with a neighbor, and watch the sky fade into the lavender kind of dusk, then maybe the soup ain’t second class.

Even if it’s mostly rocks.