Talisman

Seems I was doing this two years ago! Still putting things away and not knowing which place will be their final and orderly home. I opened my kitchen drawer. Just to get a spoon. An ordinary teaspoon to spoon deep brown sugar into delicious dark coffee. The walnut coloured drawer, except for the white plastic cutlery holders, was a jumble. A colourful jumble of rolled up napkins, tea towels, kitchen hand towels with crocheted handles and anything not cutlery all nested beside the white plastic. The box of plastic bread bags fit snugly against the side, snugged into the corner. And then there was an item that really doesn’t fit anywhere but has come with me on my travels from Regina to Texas to Kelowna and then here in my various abodes. Wooden, tapered at one end with a knob, kind of flattened, at the other end. Too long for one space, too short for another space and rolling unevenly if given it’s way.

This item is completely unnecessary to my daily, monthly or even yearly life. There is no task left for it to do except to connect me to a memory. I do often write about childhood memories. I can always trust them to bring a smile to my face and warmth in my heart.  

The refrigerators of old ~ actually the refrigerators of my day ~ didn’t have ice makers. Crushed ice or ice cubes. Maybe the rich folks in the city did, but not on the farm where I was raised. My dad loved his ice tea. Having grown up in the south from age twelve, ice tea was as much a part of his life in summer as coffee or tea is to many. He also liked his glass, a metal one, filled to the brim with crushed ice. Thus this wooden pestle, used for stirring apples through an aluminum colander, was seconded to become an ice crushing hammer wielded by myself and brothers or sisters. Wrapped up carefully in an old tea towel, ice cubes were beaten into shards and crystals by this old wooden pestle. That memory comes bearing my dad, my mom, my siblings and summer time on the farm. It’s always sunny in that memory ~ after all ice tea is always best on a hot summer day.

“Every childhood has its talisman, the sacred objects that look

 innocuous enough to the outside world, but that trigger an onslaught

 of vivid memories when the grown child confronts them.”

~ Steven Johnson