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your mama's old fashioned, your daddy don't play
you'll always be this lovely 'cause they raised you that way
[outkast]
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Two summers ago, I stole a spoon from a farm in California.
I can't explain my actions, except to say that for some strange reason, this spoon broke my heart. I found it while I was pawing through our disaster of a silverware drawer, trying to find something to stir with, and I didn't really look at it until after I'd tossed it aside on the broad wooden counter we used as a cutting board. There it sat, in a congealing puddle, until after we'd laughed through dinner and went out to watch the sun set on the porch.
I came back inside, and there was this spoon, with sunflowers wrought on the handle and a dent right at the neck. It was a little tarnished, a little too small, the perfect mismatched farm spoon. I picked it up, rinsed it off, pressed the ridges in its design into my thumb, and never gave it back.
I can't explain my actions, except to say that this spoon looked like something I'd like to be. I'm not sure why. It had something to do with how it was designed with a clear purpose in mind, how it didn't belong anywhere, not even with the other spoons, that its age was what made it lovely. I couldn't bear the thought of other aimless farm interns eating with it, maybe breaking it or losing it, never really looking at it. I kept it on the dashboard of my car as I drove across state lines months later, through morning and dusk, and hoped it didn't care that I didn't have any particular destination in mind.
Sometimes I wonder if it misses its California roots. If it mourns cradling astonishingly fresh squash soup on those foggy San Francisco mornings, being held by a different hand every day, the clatter of its companions on the floor when that cursed drawer inevitably broke.
But I hope it's glad for a new adventure. I'm grateful for its presence, like a reminder from God that we need lives built around sunflowers and good food. It reminds me to use it to eat things worthy of my body and mind and soul, to build a good life, one with gifts to give, one with lots of milky black tea and homemade pasta sauce to stir.
