I brought a strawberry milk shake home for my 98-year-old mother the other day.

When she awakened in the evening, I asked her if she wanted the milk shake. She said yes. I place it in front of her, put the straw in it and walked to the sink to do something. I did not see her take a drink after a few minutes so asked how her mild shake was. She just looked me.

I then asked her if she was going to drink her milk shake. She said, “what do I do”?

I tilted my head, reached over pushing the straw toward her and said, “put the straw in your mouth and suck on it”. It took a few seconds for the milk shake to reach her mouth. When it did, she stopped and said, “mmm”.

Then she looked at me and said, “what’s next”? I replied, “do it again”. She did and enjoyed the rest of the shake.

It dawned on me that at almost 99, she did not grow up with straws. As we age and our short-term memory fails us, we more easily recall things from our distant pasts.

Straws were not in hers…

As a youth my mother rode with her father to sell ice and coal. In the summer they would travel around the neighborhood where she would collect the money people had to purchase ice for their ice boxes. They would supply pennies, a nickel, dime, whatever they had. Her father would chip off the amount of ice that a customer’s payment would cover. I imagine that the ice would only last until the next day, when the process repeated itself.

There was a similar process for coal in the Winter.

Although straws were sold at that time, I cannot imagine them being part of my family’s household or farm in the 1920’s or 30’s.