"I Got You an Elegant Spoon!"
Our son, Peter, took his time learning to walk. He was a full 18 months old before he was willing to exchange his scoots and crawls for the life of a biped. But man that kid could talk.
At daycare one time, after he inserted himself into a conversation the teachers assumed he couldn’t follow, one of them said, “Peter, you don’t miss a thing, do you?” To which three-year-old Peter reportedly replied, “I miss my teddy bear.”
I begin with the preschool years, because it helps explain how, a year or so later, Peter could burst out of the gym at his elementary school screaming, “I GOT YOU AN ELEGANT SPOON!!!”
Inside the gym was a “holiday market” where the kids could buy 25-cent gifts for their parents. (Families donate stuff they’re keen to get rid of—only to end up with another family’s castoffs. It’s definitely the most amusing of the various school fundraisers.) Anyway, picture, if you will, a large serving spoon made of pot metal, with a faux bamboo handle. It was simultaneously a) not hard to understand the family who had chosen to part with it and b) instantly embraced as one of my prized possessions.
The Elegant Spoon took pride of place on the mantel, in between brief tours of duty on birthdays and holidays. By eschewing everyday use, we were respecting the spoon’s, um, elegance—and perhaps aiming to extend its life, because one day it broke: the metal shaft just snapped in two. We kept it, of course, but when a quick epoxy fix failed to take, we quietly resigned ourself to having not An Elegant Spoon so much as a box of…spoon bones.
This brings me to this past weekend. To live in Trump’s America is to feel that expertise and empathy no longer matter. But of all the lies Trump tells, this is perhaps the biggest. Not only do expertise and empathy matter as much as they ever have; they are alive and well in communities across the nation.
One tiny example from my neck of the woods: on Saturday morning, BARN (The Bainbridge Artisan Resource Network) held a “Fix-It Fair,” inviting people to bring in something that needed repair—and their members (carpenters, woodworkers, machinists, electricians, artists, sewers, etc.) would give it a whirl. No charge. Just a chance for the community to come together, for some people to ask for help, and for others to provide it.
I showed up—a little sheepish because I knew the weight-to-vexation ratio of my spoon was not ideal. BARN weighed everything that got fixed that day, to track how much poundage they kept from the landfill.
I should not have worried. Here you see no fewer than four people—spanning three generations!—deep in discussion about how to fix my spoon:
It turns out that removing a sheared-off metal shaft encased by faux bamboo is an interesting puzzle. They ended up drilling it out with this magnificent machine. In the process, they were so worried about cracking the handle, I rushed to reassure them, “I appreciate all you’re doing—it’s not the end of the world if it breaks.” “Yes it is!” said the man in charge of the machine shop. “This ::kindly wink:: is a family heirloom.” I guess so, I thought. I mean every heirloom has to start somewhere, right?
I left BARN that morning not just with my beloved spoon made whole, but with my spirits lifted: Trump will eventually be gone. This culture—of community not cruelty, of conservation not destruction, of ingenuity not ignorance—is the culture I remember, even as a young child, celebrating at the Bicentennial. The country’s next big birthday, our 250th on July 4th, is shaping up to be all kinds of ugly in Washington D.C.—but that reflects our corrupt, crass president. Elsewhere, the imperfect but beautiful America we know and love endures.
Image credit: photo taken by Kate Gace Walton with permission from the kind people at BARN.
Notes:
1. For a picture of the spoon itself, please email me and consider telling me one of your favorite kid-/utensil-/community-related stories? I love sharing my thoughts with all of you, but I’m happiest with this whole project when my posts become a two-way street.
2. You know what else is giving me hope these days? Jon Ossoff’s thoughtful, charismatic leadership. Several presidential elections ago, I was 100% Team Pete, but more and more I find myself dreaming about Secretary of State Pete Buttigieg serving in an Ossoff administration. Anyone else? Anyone want to tell me why I’m off base?
