Thursday, June 18, 2009

grandma's bowl

{bon iver's skinny love -- to be opened & played in another tab, while reading}

i was standing doing the dishes tonight when this song came on. i don't know what it is about this song, but it makes me think of hanging out with my family or it makes me think of being young and hanging out with my family. there's something really youthful to it. and i've been thinking about youth, specifically the disappearance of it, a lot lately.

but as i'm standing there, doing the dishes, listening to this song, i realize i'm really a grown up now. i think of all the grown up things that take over my daily life. the grown up details, the good and the bad.
and i'm doing the dishes, doing grown up dishes. i'm washing a bowl. the type of bowl i'd always associated as a grown-up piece of dishware. it looks exactly like something my gramma carey had.

recently a really, really cool friend of mine and kaari's came back into our lives. i think it'd been about four years since we'd seen H. she'd been a good friend of my sister's for years. maybe even her first customer ever? and they'd hit it off and gotten together as friends since then. years later, when i met H for the first time, it felt like meeting family. when she met RK, she fell in love with the 'us' of us. so, her coming back into our lives this past year was like coming home again.

almost four years ago, she bought RK and i a wedding gift. this year, she sent it to us.
and this is the bowl of which i speak.
we'd had one like it when i was a kid. this grown-up bowl that reminded me of my gramma.
i remember it as one of the best bowls in our kitchenware repertoire. it was our popcorn bowl, mostly, but it had held other important food items over the years. here it was, my version of those days. it was in my hands, this gorgeous hand-made wood bowl.

and this song was playing and it,

it made me feel like the kind of grown-up i'd always wanted to be in my youth.

3 comments:

spudballoo said...

This is so beautiful, you have a lovely way with words..it's like a poem. I know that feeling, sometimes it strikes me that I am finally a grown up, rather than someone 'playing' at being a grown up. The responsibility feels crushing sometimes, but I love the connections that are showing themselves...from me to my mother to my grandmother...

Photo of the bowl?! x

Christine--RHP said...

bon iver just kills me--there are definite 'atmospheres' in this music that take you to places in your psyche...
I totally know what you mean when music connects a whole bunch of threads in your past/present/future and you're left standing there in awe of the magic....

kira said...

i love (adore, need, desire, covet, lust after) that song and i so love this story. a ghey emoticon smiley can't do proper justice as a response to this post, so i'll just say "c'mon skinny molly, just last the year." that's how i feel about trying to come to terms with being a grown-up now, too -- "just last the year." don't freak out about it. take it moment by moment. and appreciate every fucking second.