The antique ice box was very close to the pantry. I usually gave her a few cans to play with but one day (when I was still in denial that I would never be able to stay a step ahead of Lynda), she decided to take more cans out of the pantry. She carefully arranged them in lines that snaked across the kitchen floor. I wasn't particularly concerned because she enjoyed putting them back into the pantry as much as taking them out. So I was feeling pretty confident that all was well and I decided to take a quick potty break close by. Most of the time Lynda joined me so I knew exactly what she was doing but I thought I knew that and I let my guard down for three to four minutes. Three to four minutes was all it took. When I came back into the kitchen I found in the place of the cans of green beans, corn, fruit cocktail and other items with beautiful labels describing the contents ...a line of shiny silver cans. There were large ones and smaller ones but one thing they all had in common was that they all gleamed in silver radiance after being freed from their labels. Each label had been unceremoniously pulled off and lay crumpled in the floor. 
The cans...ah the cans were all alike now. First in the line were the small silver cans and next were the middle sized silver cans and at the end of the perfect line were the largest shiny silver cans. I stood in amazement at how quickly she had accomplished removing the labels from an entire pantry of can goods. We had many mystery meals. Sometimes I was able to choose a vegetable but on other occasions my vegetable turned out to really be a fruit. We had to laugh about it because there was no other option unless we threw them all away and started over and what guarantee did we have that the exact thing wouldn't happen again? Absolutely none. The sheer joy on her face made me understand why the labels had to come off. The labels were all different. She could not line up different things in an orderly manner conducive with the obsessive compulsive behaviors of her little autistic brain. The labels had to go and so they did. At the end of playing with the shiny silver cans she and I put them back into the pantry. In the pantry they all looked shiny and silver, too. They all looked alike which was great for making a shiny silver line on the floor. It was not so handy when trying to prepare a meal and guessing what was in the can by the size and shape of the can or the way its sounded when I shook it close to my ear.
Last summer, when I cleaned up mother's house while she was in the hospital, I found one of Lynda's cans she had played with at Nana Hot's house. It was smushed down into a kind of an accordion shape. No longer was it a shiny silver. It was now a rusty brown. Many years ago the label had been pulled off the can which was now a rusty brown and for about 37 years her grand mother had kept it under her antique washstand in her bedroom. Lynda hadn't played with cans since her stroke in 1981 but the memories of the days when she did are still very vivid in my mind. I threw the rusted can in the garbage but I understood fully why my mother had allowed it to stay there all of these years. Lynda loved that smushed can and my mother loved Lynda. Many times mother had cooked Lynda's favorites out of those cans and sometimes--- she just watched Lynda as she played with the unopened, unlabeled cans making shiny silver lines across my mother's hardwood floors.
The cans...ah the cans were all alike now. First in the line were the small silver cans and next were the middle sized silver cans and at the end of the perfect line were the largest shiny silver cans. I stood in amazement at how quickly she had accomplished removing the labels from an entire pantry of can goods. We had many mystery meals. Sometimes I was able to choose a vegetable but on other occasions my vegetable turned out to really be a fruit. We had to laugh about it because there was no other option unless we threw them all away and started over and what guarantee did we have that the exact thing wouldn't happen again? Absolutely none. The sheer joy on her face made me understand why the labels had to come off. The labels were all different. She could not line up different things in an orderly manner conducive with the obsessive compulsive behaviors of her little autistic brain. The labels had to go and so they did. At the end of playing with the shiny silver cans she and I put them back into the pantry. In the pantry they all looked shiny and silver, too. They all looked alike which was great for making a shiny silver line on the floor. It was not so handy when trying to prepare a meal and guessing what was in the can by the size and shape of the can or the way its sounded when I shook it close to my ear.Last summer, when I cleaned up mother's house while she was in the hospital, I found one of Lynda's cans she had played with at Nana Hot's house. It was smushed down into a kind of an accordion shape. No longer was it a shiny silver. It was now a rusty brown. Many years ago the label had been pulled off the can which was now a rusty brown and for about 37 years her grand mother had kept it under her antique washstand in her bedroom. Lynda hadn't played with cans since her stroke in 1981 but the memories of the days when she did are still very vivid in my mind. I threw the rusted can in the garbage but I understood fully why my mother had allowed it to stay there all of these years. Lynda loved that smushed can and my mother loved Lynda. Many times mother had cooked Lynda's favorites out of those cans and sometimes--- she just watched Lynda as she played with the unopened, unlabeled cans making shiny silver lines across my mother's hardwood floors.
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