In absence of its larger forms
A love letter to spoons? I guess??
T believes me, when I tell him that objects have lives of their own. I know he knows, because I’ve made myself acquainted with the state of his kitchenware. One evening, a knife falls from the rack, of its own accord. Just as suddenly, the fruit bowl seems to ripen all at once, and the skin of some half-opened package decides to embark on an adventure of its own.
The first few times we make a meal together, I am unsure of how to navigate all the places where he may have stored parts of himself. We take turns playing a balancing act on every fridge shelf, putting items back and pulling pieces out. We buy takeaway and accumulate its plastic silhouettes, only to soon after store our own stews and half a portion of rice for half the assembly of some future lunch.
He notices my pause ahead of chopping up root vegetables. He agrees we ought to keep them chunky and that is all the blessing that I need. I watch him fret about the tiny tongs nearly gone missing. We mimic its cry for help. The spoons come out to play. At every jar opened, they dance. We jostle between chopping boards, take turns stirring and forgetting to stir. I nudge our half-filled glasses back to safety from the countertop edge.
He tells me of his granny and this neighbourhood of generations. On a brief layover at her home, I am mesmerised by everything hanging on the walls. Turning over her most recent collection of photographs on familial routes across the English countryside, there are so many which tell of the serendipitous encounters of unsuspecting objects. Her imagery is confrontational and intimate. The interactions of these objects do a double take of their own bond, and from then on they are so irrevocably intertwined with one another. Amid such collisions, who knows what else is possible. I watch her fill our mugs to the brim, spilling milk over the handles, T stepping in to pool the rest back into the sink.
I hold so many and so few objects of my own. When it comes to place, they are only ever glimpsed in passing. There is very little that actually tethers me to any one on the list. After all, rarely have circumstances allowed for a full return. I have written in reference to many of my scenes and settings and items for some time now. I am still hopelessly enamoured with the wine glasses found at a secondhand fair last year, slightly overwhelmed by the ridiculousness of most of the trinkets whose company I keep. I ascribe each with meaning and maybe a tad too much emotion. But they have not travelled generations. I have nothing of my grandparents (or wider family for that matter), who have not given me anything to hold or keep (or were unfortunately gone too soon to be able to). I guess deep down what I am upset about is the absence of those kinds of relationships in my life.
There’s a part of me that is so self conscious of that. I got nervous awhile ago when I realised how polar opposite in set up this was to the person I love. On the phone to mum, I admit this. With my therapist, I try to spell out why. I crave continuum more than I like to acknowledge. I want more anchorage than I have been privy to. I am so in awe of the kinds of intimacy that are possible among those who are so connected with both people and place. No wonder I refuse to sew back a button to one of my mother’s jackets or part ways with the rusted jewellery from just a few years earlier. I want to articulate my own heritage, especially through its tiniest of glimmers, in the absence of the larger ones.
In many ways, I’m bad at letting go, even while I excel at it. I tell T of the family I wish knew me closer. He includes me in his without hesitation — but of course, no family is perfect. Having them near doesn’t come without its own complexities. Of course, I know this. I don’t take their wholehearted welcome for granted. I realise how much it means to me that he has them. Upon clearing out a portion of his mugs, he insists I keep any that take my fancy. I reach for a mismatched pair that I come to realise later arrived via granny herself.
Amid some anecdote with T, I joke that my life’s story is one of having to let go before I’ve even held on. He has taken it upon himself to show me a different story.
Ahead of the new year, I gift him a pair of spoons that are unlikely acquaintances. He gifts me a tiny sculpture of a dumpling in honour of us.