Long before us, there was a whole world spinning for people who would become our parents. Those reminders still pop up in my everyday life from time to time, and it brings a smile.
When closing out our mother’s home, my most organized sister would set things on the long kitchen countertop for us all to look through. If we saw something we could not bear to part with to strangers, she encouraged us to take it home.
One day, I noticed that none of my sisters had chosen the old bean dish that had existed our entire lives.
“Are you sure no one wants this?” I asked, holding up the brown dish with a shallow, green interior.
“No, it’s all yours if you want it,” my sister assured me.
“It’s not the prettiest thing,” another sister said.
It definitely had lost its looks over 70-plus years, but it has earned every nick. I remember Mom telling us that it had been a gift from a neighbor girl with whom she shared many childhood adventures.
The humble bean dish served us untold thousands of meals. It is now faded and chipped, but for some reason, I just could not let it go.
The shape of the interior rim reminds me it once had a matching lid, likely dropped and broken somewhere across the eons of time. My mother was not a sentimental sort, not clinging to children’s colored pictures or any beloved old toys, but the shower and wedding gifts that had come their way in 1951 stood the test of time.
When I think of my own mother, as well as countless women like her who served not only a large family, but the additional hungry helpers on the farms across this country at so many farm tables, it brings respect and admiration.
Three big meals a day were served, often the head count shifting and changing as mealtime approached.
“It’s okay, I’ll just peel a few more potatoes!” I heard my own mother say so many times.
In the summertime, she might summon a couple of us to husk another dozen ears of sweet corn while she got busy warming up salted water in the large roasting pot. Farm women knew how to stretch a meal, and they did it without fanfare.
I remember scalloped potatoes as a common side dish served in the humble brown pot, and I can’t help but think how many times it was soaked and scrubbed after all the food had been consumed.
It’s no wonder it has faded from its origin as a treasured wedding gift. All the miles it put on from the moment it was wrapped as a gift to my young parents has surely earned it a protected case in the Smithsonian; instead, for now, it gets a special place in my own kitchen.
My sentimental heart just can’t send it packing.
