Keep it Real Wednesdays, May 29, 2019, The Spoon
Last night as I reached into the drawer for a serving spoon, I touched the ugliest spoon in the drawer and smiled. A flood of emotion flowed over me as I grabbed this spoon, tears spilled from my eyes as I experienced the past, the present, and the future.
I am not exactly sure when the ugly spoon entered our family, but my Mother said it was a gift from her mother in law, and that she said it was her mothers, making it my father’s Grandmothers spoon originally. So, the ugly spoon has likely spanned several generations already and has likely seen over 125 years. It has earned its right to be ugly.
I have distinct memories of the spoon serving up heaps of food on our plates or digging deeply into a gallon of ice cream for the best scoop. My brother and sister and I would giggle at the likeness of the spoon to – well – male genitalia! It would cause us to giggle and smirk when we used it at our family dinner table and was always a source of embarrassment when my Mom would reach to grab it when we had company over for dinner. Oh no…not THAT spoon!
Over the years, the spoon followed me. When Rosemary moved in with us in 1998, the spoon came with her and the spoon remains well used as a family staple. It is often a source of quizzical glances when we have friends over and use it to serve food. If they only knew how much love was in that spoon. When my brother and sister visit from Arizona, they will often pick up the spoon and I can literally see the flood of memories flow through them without expressing a single word.
This morning as I was unloading the dishwasher, I picked up the ugly spoon and smiled. Not all treasures sparkle or are even pretty… sometimes the greatest memories are in oddly shaped spoons passed down from generation to generation.
