I was watching Lou Read the directions for her new coffee maker the other day and got to thinking about how things have a way of coming back around.

This is one of those little metal stovetop coffee makers. You put water in the bottom, coffee in a compartment on top, screw the whole thing together, put it on the stove and wait. All that for one cup of coffee.

Lou bought it as part of her effort to get away from plastic and, more specifically, microplastics.

Watching her study those directions took me back more than fifty years to my Papa Lee.

Papa Lee drank too Nescafé instant coffee. We would heat water on the wood stove, put a couple of heaping spoonfuls of Nescafé in a cup, pour in the hot water, and voilà—coffee.

No directions required.

Papa didn’t know anything about microplastics.

And coffee isn’t the only old thing that seems to have found a new life.

Take castor oil.

Lou uses castor oil on her face now. Apparently it is good for your skin.

I have a somewhat different relationship with castor oil.

When we were growing up, castor oil was not a beauty product. It was something to be endured.

Every year before winter, Dad would line us up, sort of like a firing line, and one by one we would each get a spoonful of what had to be the nastiest concoction known to children. The theory was that it would ward off whatever bad things winter might bring.

Then came a spoonful of sugar.

Thank you, Jesus, for the sugar.

Did the castor oil actually keep us healthy all winter? I have no idea. Maybe it did. Or maybe we were simply too scared to admit we were sick for fear somebody would bring that bottle back out.

These days there is also something called “forest bathing.”

I’m told that spending time among trees can actually be good for the body and mind. Something about what the trees release, the fresh air, being surrounded by nature and all those things that are supposed to reduce stress and make us healthier.

Well, shoot.

We called that playing in the woods.

Nobody told us we were forest bathing. Nobody told us to be mindful, breathe deeply, connect with nature or absorb the benefits of the forest.

They just chucked us outside.

Apparently, all those hours we spent running through the woods, playing at the creek, and making new trails were doing us some good.

We were getting all those good joo joo vibes and didn’t even know it.

Same thing with morning sunlight.

Now people deliberately go outside shortly after waking up to get fifteen minutes or so of morning light. There are all sorts of reasons given for it—vitamin D, your body clock, sleep, mood and general well-being.

We didn’t have a morning sunlight routine.

We had work.

Depending on the time of year, you might start the morning weeding the garden, cutting the grass, or working in tobacco.

Nobody said, “Fellas, y’all need to get some morning sunlight and regulate your circadian rhythms.”

They said, “Get up. We’ve got work to do.”

I suspect we got plenty of sunlight.

Then there is organic food.

People pay ridiculous prices for organic vegetables today, and Lou is the chief organic foods queen. If it says “organic” on the label, she’s interested.

And don’t think I’m complaining. I’m eating the organic food, drinking the coffee, and benefiting from Lou’s determination to get some of the plastic out of our lives.

Funny thing is, the healthier she tries to make our life today, the more some of it starts to look like the life we had back then.

Growing up, we didn’t have an organic section.

We had a garden.

If Mom needed onions, she sent you to the garden to pull some onions.

We didn’t call them organic onions.

They were just onions.

We didn’t have a farmers market either.

If we wanted apples or peaches, sometimes that meant going over into Virginia to an orchard. Aunt Dot’s mother, Miss Sally, lived just below an apple orchard, so visiting Miss Sally could also mean fresh apples.

I don’t remember all the details anymore, but I remember my parents getting fruit by the bushel for canning.

Nobody called it “farm-to-table” or “seasonal eating.”

It was just what you did.

Uncle Obie grew sweet potatoes down in what we called “the bottom,” a field on the lower part of the farm beside the creek.

Today, somebody could probably put up a little sign:
Organic. Locally Grown. Sustainably Farmed. Creek-Bottom Sweet Potatoes.

And charge twice as much for them.

Uncle Obie just called them sweet potatoes.

The more I look at it, apparently we were way ahead of our time.

Organic food.

Locally sourced produce.

Morning sunlight.

Forest bathing.

Natural skincare.

Plastic-free coffee.

Apparently, we were wellness pioneers.

We just didn’t know enough to brag about it.

Now, I’m not saying everything about the old days was better. It wasn’t. Our parents and grandparents embraced modern conveniences when they came along, and for good reason.

There is nothing particularly romantic about working tobacco on a hot summer morning.

And I have absolutely no desire to bring back the annual dose of castor oil.

But I do wonder whether progress always moves in a straight line.

We spent generations making life more convenient. We packaged things, processed things and figured out ways to save ourselves from growing, preserving and making so many things ourselves.

And now, little by little, we’re rediscovering some of what we left behind.

Only now it has a name.

And sometimes a pretty good price tag.

Maybe Papa didn’t need a fancy coffee maker.

Maybe Miss Sally didn’t need a farmers market.

Maybe Uncle Obie didn’t need anybody to tell him about locally grown food.

And maybe all those hours we spent roaming around in the woods really were doing something good for us.

We just didn’t know to call it forest bathing.

We thought we were playing.

Maybe that’s the funny thing about getting older. If you hang around long enough, you get to watch the world discover things that weren’t discoveries at all.

They were just life.

At least, As Best As I Remember It