Day 32: Missing pieces

From The Playful Way to Serious Writing: Where are the missing spoons?

On the bottom shelf of our pantry growing up, there was a brown wooden box. Lined with pink satin, it held my mother's silverware. She had selected the pattern in 1969 at the age of 18 for her wedding to my dad. We used them for Sunday dinners, Thanksgiving, and their anniversary. They were beautiful. As the years passed, the spoons began to disappear, and I remember my mother saying in exasperation "Where did my spoons go?" Well.

There was one of the dessert spoons, with it's curling rose pattern, that I smouched to be my first "Barbie" doll; driving it around in one of my mother's high heeled shoes with a butter knife "Ken." Then there were the two that we left under the cottonwood tree in the backyard after using them as tools for our dinosaur excavation. (We hadn't found any dinosaurs, but we did chisel through a lot of roots to that tree in the attempt.) I'm pretty sure that one got tossed in the trash inside a Miracle Whip jar. and another one we left at the church after bringing a dish to a potluck. One by one, the spoons disappeared. Eventually, the only one left was the scalloped sour cream spoon. The last one left standing, to be used on Sundays, Thanksgiving, and their anniversary.

Now that I'm grown up and have some silverware of my own, I too watch it wander off in my kid's pudgy little paws. Some of them I've found--in the bathtub or in the dollhouse. I can only hope they're being used to dig up dinosaurs and that the lovely, fine dessert spoons will marry the tall, handsome butter knives.