The Gift of the Silver Spoon
The other day, I began what some call spring cleaning. I am a sporadic housekeeper. I respect rules of sanitation, but I have little interest of inclination for scheduled house keeping tasks. I pick things up when they annoy me, and clean things that seem to require it when I notice. Otherwise, I am easily distracted from these chores by just about anything: an invitation to share tea and cookies, a good book, a new paint colour, a cool way of doing anything….
In the spirit of sporadic interest in such matters, I found three silver spoons that had been left on my studio table. Normally, these would live in the chest I inherited from my mother, containing silverware. I believe I may have intended to use them for something in a now evaporated project idea.
This time, the spoons transported me to another time. Each one was different. Two of them had curved handles, intended for the hand of a child. The carving on the handle was different for each spoon. The last spoon was simply a small silver spoon. It wasn’t carved, but it did have initials engraved on the tip of the handle: MG.
Whose spoons were these? I know it was a tradition to give a child a silver spoon for their christening in my generation. It was, I believe, an amulet of abundance. The spoon was the giver’s wish for the baby’s future health and wealth.
Was one of them mine? Who was MG? Not mine, my initials are MJG. Was this my father’s spoon? Marcel Gélinas?
My father was born in 1918, right after world war 1. He was the fifth of twelve children. My grandfather owned a flooring sales and installation store. My grandmother had a large family to manage.
Who would provide such a child with a silver spoon?
What does a silver spoon bring to one’s life? What kind of omen, or token, is this?
My father was born at the end of the Great War. He was a child in the roaring 20’s, came of age during the Depression, and saw his siblings go off to World War 2. He lived through heartbreak, and eventually married my mother in 1951. He experienced the rollercoaster of family life: two children, one of whom had epilepsy, the other born a “blue baby”. He loved my mother, but the shadow of her lost love was never far away. Diagnosed with diabetes and angina, he died of a heart attack at 52.
Should the silver spoon have protected him from any of this? Or would I need to look at his life from another angle to find its aura? Let’s look at his story again.
My father was born in 1918, after the Great War. He was born in a loving family, and the timing of his birth meant he never went to war in Spain, like his big brother, who came back a broken man. He lived through the Depression, but his family’s business held, because they did work for the military. He was in the Reserves in World War 2, but never got shipped to the front. He was jilted at the altar by his first great love, but dropped his life here to travel to Europe in 1949. Instead of living the horror of battles, he witnessed the post-war period, made lifelong friends, developed a political perspective based on a broad spectrum of experiences and observations. Then he journaled about it. He learned to speak Italian and Spanish during his travels, and transmitted to me his passion for languages.
From this perspective, he had his share of trauma and sadness, but he also came through periods that could have taken a very different turn.
Are we all presented with a silver spoon of our own? A token of our coming life, a life held in the bowl of a spoon, reflecting the light spectrum eventually filtered by our particular experiences.