Aunt Mac’s Little Can of Eggs

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Even though it was 49 years ago, I still remember the WW2-era can of dried eggs sitting on the shelf in my extended family’s shared vacation cabin in the Arkansas Ozarks. I was five and remember my mother fussing as to why on earth my Aunt Mac thought she needed to keep those dried eggs. After all, it was 1963; the things were probably way beyond anything you would ever want to eat. I tucked that scene away in the “important things to remember” file of my young mind.

I grew up in the age of home-built bomb shelters, public service announcements advising one on ways to survive an atomic bomb (yeah, right) and feeling like maybe, just maybe, my generation would never see adulthood. Consequently, I always carried a worrisome, pessimistic burden and urgency to live as much as I could as soon as I could.

At the same time, I was fascinated with learning all the old ways of doing things, canning, gardening, learning about medicinal herbs, keeping animals, natural childbirth, breastfeeding. Learning all this was all well and good, but still, I felt uneasy and as if something was missing. Every once in a while, the memory of that can of dried eggs in Aunt Mac’s kitchen would bubble up to the surface of my brain.

It took a while, but finally, I got the message. I have to admit I wasn’t listening very well though. The Y2K scare had me out there with everyone else buying some extra toilet paper and canned beans and throwing it all in a spare closet thinking I was ready for whatever January 1 2000 would bring. Thankfully, for all of us dummies nothing happened. But I liked the feeling having those things brought me and made me want to do and learn more.

I went about my prepping in a hit or miss style until about three years ago. Aunt Mac would be so proud of me. My gardening, canning, and herbal knowledge have increased ten-fold. I now know the difference between hard white and soft white wheat. I am best friends with my pressure canner. I am saving for a solar oven. I can load my gun and shoot it. I can talk water filtration with the best of them. I now have enough food storage to feed four people for six months and am working up to a year’s worth. I am finding that the peace that knowing I can care for my family under any number of circumstances has made me want to reach out to others and encourage them to do the same. Sometimes my advice falls on deaf ears and other times, like that can of dried eggs, it nudges someone else onto the path of preparedness. Sadly, my Aunt Mac will never know how her little can of eggs influenced me, but if she did, I bet she would give them to me because I just know they are probably still sitting in that cabin in the Ozarks.