Perpetual Change

Ode to a Spoon

In what is beginning to be an over fascination with utensils, I have some rather trivial news to share that I found quite alarming.
It has struck me as a cruel irony of agricultural life that in autumn as the weather is the grandest of the year – mornings crisp, days sunny, and evenings still long and warm – most people are consuming all their free time in the kitchen. I would like to be savoring this time in investment for the dull, cold memory of what I know to be coming, but instead I have been washing, peeling, chopping, freezing, boiling, and canning for endless hours. My new skills have been rather successful and give me great hope for winter culinary adventures. I’ve even made an all natural watermelon jam! But in the process, which consumed several hours and a whole watermelon, I left inside the rind carcass my little spoon from the ice cream in Lviv that I wrote of last April (see archives June 24, 2005 “Day in School" -PS section). It was a little daily reminder of the progresses I have made here, and I accidentally threw the spoon, rind and all away! The little spoon that survived 2 scout camps here where countless other tools were casualties in the battle of educating youth; the little spoon that brought me yogurt so many overnight-train-ride mornings; the little spoon that made the jam that I will enjoy all winter, and be forced to remember it bitterly and sweetly.
Oh, the irony.

posted by jjs @ 2:49 AM