It’s Sunday morning and I am feeling much better. The flu has only slowed me down and, although this might make you laugh, I spent an awful lot of time while I was lying in bed unable to sleep, my nose dripping, a headache pounding in the lower back of my head, my throat scratchy and desirous of some flat ginger ale, thinking about recipes and my cookbook! I know writing this cookbook may not be healthy for me. At the expense of all else, I seem to be always dreaming of this project!
I got out of bed this morning and walked straight into the kitchen and reached into my lazy Susan and pulled out my favourite crockery bowl. Swear. I know I am even smiling at myself as I write this and shaking my head, seriously they may be something wrong with me. Quite soon I am almost certain, little men, not in stark white coats smelling slightly of bleach and hand sanitizer and offering snug fitting coats that clasp at the back but rather in my case the little men in stark white aprons smelling slightly of flour and nutmeg and offering the newest in Teflon coated, raised cookie baking sheets will come suddenly through my front door and escort me out and into a sparkling clean doughnut truck to take me somewhere quiet for a rest! Anyway doesn’t everyone get out of bed and walk immediately into their kitchen and pull out their favourite bowl and feel comforted and pleased?
So I did. I pulled out my bowl and just held it and look at it all around. I suppose I must have been dreaming about it or thinking about it as I awoke. It was my grandmother’s bowl. It is a thick crockery bowl, medium to large sized, cream-coloured with two thick blue bands around its lip. The finish has been muted, almost buffed natural, by the endless washing that poor bowl has endured over its life. It has a soft texture, the inside scored gently by spoons pushing around its sides. I am not sure where Grandma ever got the bowl, whether it was a gift for Christmas or she bought it at Sears or whether it was a found, for a nickel, on a church bazaar table nestled besides hand knitted mittens and tea cozies. My cousin Heather who sometimes reads this blog will know the one!
But I remember that bowl throughout my childhood. Coming in off the hills outside her house, cold from riding our sleigh, it would be on the counter, Grandma making us tea biscuits and hot chocolate when we came in from the cold, hot biscuits covered in butter and honey emerging from that bowl, and served to us at the table to warm up. I know she would have made pies and desserts, dinners and lunches in that bowl for my own mother when she was a child, Mom’s favourites emerging from that bowl. Grandma’s hands would have washed it, standing at her sink looking out the window at the garden and the bush beyond. My hands travel where hers once did as I clean it after feeding my guy. My mother gave me the bowl when Grandma passed away. I had just left for university and I am sure my mother, ever practical, gifted me the bowl knowing that I would be setting up my apartment and, having nothing, needed everything. But Mom gave me much more. I have a piece of my history, my mother’s and my grandmother’s history. I have a deep affection for that bowl, almost for the bowl itself. I love each chip out of the crockery and the marks inside, the way the blue is fading. I will almost always choose that bowl over any other even when it is the wrong bowl to choose by size or by design. Some dishes you simply need a wooden bowl for in order to get the right roughness for blending ingredients, but even then, I will often choose my favourite and have less than perfect results.
Does it seem strange to be rising from my flu and the first thing I did this morning is walk to the kitchen and get out my bowl? And now frankly I have talked about it for paragraphs! Yes, something is deeply off centre in me! Perhaps I just find the bowl comforting. And in this world, I take comfort from what I can. It makes me happy. Hope you have a similar bowl.
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