a spoonful of sugar

When I think back to my younger days when I hardly had a care in the world and was still small enough to hide in the laundry basket, the memories seem to be more precious. I cherish them with a fervent, yet distant affection like you would a past summer. Somehow, as I started to grow, so did the problems, and a rift I had never known to exist before suddenly did. With age and wisdom, it gradually tore us apart. Though I have never been one to linger on memory lane, there are a certain few side streets I always savour when I choose to dwindle down them.

My favourite memory is Sundays. Waking up to the sound of my dad’s classical music crooning through the house, accompanied by an occasional solo of clanking crockery from the kitchen. I would always be the first to arise from my lair, my teenage siblings preferred to harbour their hangovers in private until they were called to the table. Sundays were one the few times you’d find my mother in the kitchen, far from her usual coven of an office. Sundays were family days.

I would climb up to the breakfast bar and slurp my cup of apple juice we bought from the farmer up the road and watch her as she hectically moseyed about the kitchen. We never talked, she would never ask any questions, and nor would I. The way we conversed was through our handicraft in the kitchen – she would give me little things to do like grate the cheese or pull the parsley leaves from their stems. The little chore I prized most was measuring out ingredients for her into the Pyrex jug. She had these long metal table spoons you could tell had been used time and again, handed down from her gran, she would always tell me. The way liquid poured onto the spoon as I measured it always amazed me, for the spoons were much deeper than they appeared, and the harsh rim that curved inward would always leave a gaunt pocket of liquid floating just atop the spoon, but it never overflowed. I remember how I used to lightly blow on the little pocket, watching the tiny ripples swimming outwards then suddenly disappearing as they hit the edge of the spoon.

Every so often, I wonder why I hold that memory so fondly. I think I treasure it so much because even though we never spoke, we were both perfectly contented in each other’s silent company. She left me the spoons in her will.