I should have written it Dec. 26th and kept wondering why I hadn’t yet. It should have gone right out the door. And yet.

Then today suddenly felt like the day and I sat down and typed.

In my experience, at least, I wrote on my freecycle.org post, the on-off switch always goes first on an aging KitchenAid mixer, and this one’s about ten years old: you have to plug and unplug it. I got a replacement after it snagged a bit of my not-short hair when I wasn’t careful. Also do not put your hand down in the bowl unless it’s unplugged even if it’s stopped because it might turn itself back on–which is how I broke my wrist on a previous old one that had that problem.

But the motor is still strong. It has a reset button if it should overheat but it’s never overheated. There are two sets of bowls and whisks, making it easy to beat egg whites at the last, since they need a clean and dry bowl, and not have them deflate while you’re putting the rest of the recipe together, it has the beater and dough hook. It could last another ten years, potentially–you just have to know and not risk the risks. Tie your hair back.

Oh and where the bowl comes down to the base with a thump it’s taken the paint off the machine. But the bowl covers that up.

So with that glowing review (not exactly) I said a little prayer that the person who really needed this would get it, and hit Post. There are lots of people out there who can’t afford one of these machines at all and I just wish I could give them all new ones because there’s nothing special about me that says I should be able to so easily. But I’m able to. So just tossing this in the recycling felt wrong but by golly I was going to let them know what they were getting into with this one.

Holy inbox, Batman.

The first person who answered, I immediately felt, it’s her. She’s the one it’s for and why I held off on posting this these last few months. It needed to be when she would see it. A few messages between us later, I feel that way even more so. She just was.

The second guy wanted to know if it still had its box. After ten years? (Why on earth would I hoard that…) No? Never mind then, he said, not interested.

Yeah you just wanted to sell it on Ebay, thought I.

Somewhere before person #8 (at which point I marked it as Taken, which auto-deletes it from the site) there was a proud mom of a daughter setting up her first apartment, who quite enjoyed that I was so delighted for her daughter’s sake at that milestone as was she; I told her there was a very very small chance if enough people flaked out on me–but did she need a Cuisinart toaster oven? I’d inherited one that I’d be glad to offer.

She checked with her daughter, got back to me, and said, Yes please! I don’t think she knew that she never even had to compete with any other free cyclers or anybody else to get it. It just happened and was meant to be.

I get a bunch of space back in my kitchen after ignoring a gadget we just weren’t using. Everybody wins.

And it would still be here in the way and unappreciated if she had kvetched to herself about the changes in her own life–it’s hard to know you’re about to miss your kid so much–but rather, she shared with a stranger her delight at her daughter’s next step forward into adulthood.

And I was delighted with the both of them. And everybody won.

There is actually a third old-version-5-qt bowl.

After thirty years of that particular size and shape and appearance being the designated barf bowl when anybody’s sick (with fervent thanks for the disinfecting power of dishwashers) some traditions were just too hard to let go of. It stays.