There is always one section in our utensil drawer that is emptier than the others. Spoons are useful for so many things, and they seem to have a natural restlessness. They leap away from the confines of the kitchen. They jump into cars and carry-ons. Sometimes the places they go are even stranger. All they need is for some piece of china to whisper “Hey, diddle diddle,” and there they go, sneaking out with the dish again.
In their absence, I have learned more about them. Spoons have, depending on who you ask, between four and seven parts. There is the bowl and the handle—the two parts I know the best, because I hold one part and the other one has the food in it. But there is also the neck, the shoulders, the drop, the tip of the bowl, and the tip of the handle.
Different types of spoons are paired with different purposes. A slotted spoon can strain beans and lentils, a ramen spoon helps you sip the broth and scoop your noodles. When you need a break from eating ramen, the bent tip of the spoon’s handle is like the shepherd’s crook that used to lean against the lifeguard tower, a tool for preventing your spoon from drowning. The name of a ramen spoon is chirirenge, a fallen lotus petal.
My grandfather ate a grapefruit every morning with a serrated spoon that helped to saw away a sweet slice of pulp. I did not know my other grandfather but for a time we had his family’s silverware, which would come out at holidays and then be packed away again, all the spoons nestled into each other.
The spoons at our house now are in constant use, which may be part of why they like to escape–exhaustion. Sometimes, they can be found again. A recent expedition into a backpack found a group of fugitives clustered at the bottom, spooning each other for warmth. I am watching them more closely now, wondering if they are relieved to be once again being used for their intended purpose, or if they would rather be traveling spoons, seeing the world, or at least, a large quantity of math homework and leftover ramen spice packets.
One of my deeply embarrassing pandemic purchases was an enormous steel egg spoon, used to cook eggs over a campfire. I had visions of a life lived almost completely out of doors, a garden big enough to feed ourselves and our neighbors, chickens for the eggs, fish from the sea. We would never have to go to the store again.
The spoon is so long that it reminds me of a parable that describes heaven and hell. In hell, people sit around a table with a pot of soup in the middle. The spoons they have are so long that, while each person can reach into the soup, they can never feed themselves–and these people are always starving, the food they need just out of reach.
In heaven, there is the same soup, the same spoons. But here, each person takes a spoonful of soup and uses their long spoon to feed the person across from them. The people at this feast are happy, laughing, full of the warm soup and each other’s company. Their fate is not determined by the spoons they have, but how they use them, and how they share their what they do have with others.
Five years later, we go to the grocery store more than ever. I use my long-handled spoon about twice a year. You would not want to eat directly from it—it is much too hot—but the eggs it makes are delicious. And if you can flip your bubbling, frying egg in midair, the satisfaction is like a golden sunrise, the one that the dish and the spoon might be watching as they hold each other, wherever those lovebirds might be.
I understand what made the dish want to run away with the spoon. It’s something about the shape of it, the roundness of the bowl, the sweetness of the handle in your hand. I know someone who bought a tiny, perfect antique salt spoon with the first money he made on his own. The bowl was the size of his thumbnail. He has since wondered whether it was the wrong thing to buy, the wrong thing to love.
I don’t think it is. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with loving something beautiful and useful, with appreciating the hands that make it.
I know the power that spoons hold, because I have run away with one myself. There was once a perfectly rounded soup spoon that had been left behind at the communal outdoor kitchen of a campground we once stayed in near Joshua Tree. I could not stop using it, and on the last day, I took it, leaving one of our speckled camping spoons behind in exchange. I have often thought that I will go back someday to return it, but when I looked recently, the campground had closed, the tents and teepees and kitchen packed up and moved away.
Now I am here with my stolen spoon. Every time I use it, I feel a little guilt but mostly pleasure at how well it does what it was meant to do. The handle is not long, but I tell myself that the beauty of this spoon can fill places in me that are empty, and that, when these places are filled, I can better fill someone else’s emptiness, too. I tell myself that if one day, it sails off with a dish or finds its way into a pocket, I will wish it safe travels, and a mouth to feed at the end of the day.
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“Hey Diddle Diddle,” via Wikimedia Commons/Creative Commons license.
