The Last Spoon

This idea started down a wide road where I chose to begin and suddenly I was at a crossroad of multiple choices, some tangled with unkept bushes, and some leveled by generations of feet. I made a choice, yet be prepared for that day in April when you think, “Oh, This ties to the beginning of February”

While you are tying your hiking boots to join, look around your room and mentally give a date to when you acquired certain objects. My guess is some go back to whatever defines your first independent space, single or married. Though not a cow, they meet the definition of trousseau or the more easily spelled dowry. Something given so you don’t have to live in an empty room or sleep on the floor.

iI’m on a choosing to wait several days to run the dishwasher. The obvious choice is to air dry in the strainer next to the sink. Morning requires putting away. This morning I picked up a worn and tarnished iced tea spoon. The pattern is an unadorned curve called Flair by 1847 Rogers Brothers, a lone survivor of a 1958 starter set of silverware bought at Adler’s Jewerly. That set and Fern Dell Francisco dinnerware set me up as an single housekeeper in a one-bedroom apartment in Shreveport and served me well three years there and into a move to Texas and, for an unknown reason, with me to this day, one spoon. I polished it one more time and then put it back in the drawer.

One of my sons took my mother’s bedroom furniture to a small house outside of Beorne. The bed came back to me and the chest to my daughter. A sister-in-law had furniture made by her father that I think is now with a grandson. There is a platter a grandmother used to present the thanksgiving turkey. These objects give depth to our lives and a reminder of the continuity of love. I chose this verse before I started. Rebecca comes across miles to be married to a cousin she doesn’t know. Issac meets her and takes her to his mother’s tent, a place where, at a beginning, love grew among familiar and cherished things.

 And Isaac brought her into his mother Sarah’s tent, and took Rebekah, and she became his wife; and he loved her:

Genesis 24:7