Food Writing Prompt: A Spoon Quote Prompt
“I have measured out my life in coffee spoons” – T.S.
Eliot. Write a spoon memory. It might be at a diner, around your kitchen table,
at a friend’s house, or at a cafeteria.
There is a set of spoons that make their way into our dishwasher and which, after selective plucking by my husband show up on my desk in my home office. Why, you ask, would he be putting spoons on my desk? An attempt to make the day sweeter with a spoonful of sugar? Perhaps a gesture to help me recollect a childhood game of "Spoons"! where one spoon fewer than people was laid out in the middle of the card table, and upon completion of a certain combination of Jacks, Kings, Queens (who remembers?) you would grab one of the spoons until one person was left spoonless? Nope. Not it. Could be he is encouraging eating my morning green smoothie with this helpful utensil? Negatory. It's because I am a spoon thief. Unintentional of course,(for the most part) but true. It's out of laziness, or forgetfulness, or disregard for the onerous task of putting something back in its proper spot.
And its spot? The big reveal: The kitchen at my work place. Yes, it is me! Spoon Thief of the Office. I'm sorry you ate your African Peanut soup with a fork and knife today because of me. What happens is, I grab said scooper and take it back to my desk or lounge to eat my quinoa salad or chia seed pudding, it gets popped into my food sack, it's rightful home ignored with a promise to "put it back later", since I still have few bites left of that chia seed pudding! And the utensil drawer becomes more and more bare until people start complaining and send out emails with subject line: "Where are all the spoons?"
These are not exceptional spoons (which, ironically, is why my husband spots them easily in the dishwasher). They have been procured from Goodwill, or the basement of someone who worked formerly at a cheap kitchen supply store - (we are nothing if not scrappy at our office.) They have no weight, no flowery hieroglyphic design, perhaps just a line down their flat middles. Some appear flat like they spent a bit of time under the heavy wheels of a car missing the curvy orb which brings calmness to the mouth.
There is something soothing about a spoon in general:no prongs on which to potentially JAB oneself when taking an extra vigorous bite. The spoon slides gently in, allowing the lips to cup it and lip-nibble the morsels off. Large spoons are more challenging - difficult to wrap one's mouth around, particularly a smallish mouth like my own. I'm not trying to sound dainty, the truth is, I had 4 teeth extracted to make room for them all in my mouth. - yes four ADULT teeth. Trauma, really to be pumped full of fall-asleep medicine at 10 years old, and then wake up to a mouth of gauze and blood and the feeling that you've simply disappeared from time, hearing nurses saying kind things about your freckles and barrettes. Then home to eat slippery liquid and soft things, probably with a comforting spoon. No wonder I keep them near me at all times.
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