I fixed the Salt cellar this morning. It wasn’t terribly complicated, but it took a little bit of ingenuity and some focus and a real desire to have it fixed. I made it last year at one of those paint-your-own-ceramic workshops. Erin and I were having a mom-daughter day and I decided the last thing our cupboards needed was another coffee mug, so I chose this ceramic salt container with a rubber flange on the lid to keep it air tight and Erin pronounced it “cute,” which is an enormous compliment coming from a 16-year old girl who is your daughter.

It lasted about a week before the wooden lid came loose from the part with the rubber seal and Lauren decided shove it farther down inside rather than trying to pry it loose. This resulted in the container being full of salt beneath part of the lid that was firmly stuck halfway down, and no way to remove it. We left it like that for months, filling the upper part of the container with salt and calling it good.

But this morning as I stood over a pan of Hash Browns, imagining what it is going to be like to pack Mom’s stuff up and move her to memory care in the next week or so, I took on a project I thought I could fix. As tears tracked slowly down my cheeks, I contemplated what it would take to pry the lid out. I started by running a sharp knife around the edge of the rubber, hoping to ease it loose, but abandoned that after imagining the knife slipping out and slicing my finger. Next, I got a corkscrew and tried to drive it into the center of the wood to get ahold of it and lift up, but the wood was too dense. When I went to the junk drawer to get a screwdriver and screw, I heard Dad’s voice in my head, telling me this was the ticket.

I screwed it in until it just took hold and then grabbed the Vice Grips, stopping for a second to wonder how many other households have a pair of vice grips in the kitchen drawer and mentally patting myself on the back for my cleverness. I clamped them over the top of the screw and gently rocked the vice grips back and forth until the lid slid up and out.

I flipped Erin’s hash browns to crisp up on the other side, put the tools away and grabbed the superglue. Within minutes, the potatoes were on a plate and the two halves of the lid were tightly bonded back together. I washed out the salt cellar, refilled it with fresh salt, and wiped down the counter.

When Erin came in to eat, she opened it up, pinched out a bit of salt, and sprinkled it on her potatoes. She didn’t even notice that it was fixed. Par for the course with a teenager in the morning, I suppose, but it didn’t diminish either my sense of pride or the immense feeling of relief I had that I had found something I could accomplish today.