Both of my grandmothers, now deceased, live on in my kitchen.
My first grandmother, on my mother’s side, passed away when I was in college. My second grandmother, on my father’s side, only passed this last November. My kitchen is full of things that belonged to both of them.
I took almost my entire set of kitchenware from Grandma Dherckers. For years there was hardly a thing I owned that wasn’t directly from her collection. This includes her collection of Corelle plates–each one of them older than me. Only two of these plates survived the cross-country shipping from Michigan to California when I moved there from Asia.
In November, Grandma Newton passed. Before her passing, she gave us a Western teapot set Yoshiko liked in her apartment. It’s nothing fancy, but it belonged to her and now it’s ours. After her passing, we got her collection of bowls. I go out of my way to use them over my completely uninteresting IKEA-bought bowls.
I love these things. Sometimes they break, and I always feel an extra pang of sadness when they do. A few months ago, I snapped one of Grandma Dherckers’s spatulas trying to stir something stiff. I stared at it for a long moment before I finally found the heart to discard it. Her colander is well past the point of replacement; neither Yoshiko nor I feel particularly rushed to throw it away. It’s the very same colander she used when she made spaghetti and meat sauce for my brother and I as kids.
I think she’d be happy to know she’s continued taking care of me long since she left this world.
Not all things are meant to last forever. It’s the nature of nature to bend, break, and wear out. However, I hope some of these things will live beyond me. If I have anything to say about it, they will.
While I was in Japan, I booked a private kintsugi (金継ぎ) lesson at Pieces of Japan Studio in Kyoto. The lesson was over an hour but it felt like minutes. I ordered an advanced kintsugi kit on the spot and plan to get started learning on a set of tea cups I broke last year.
Much is made of kintsugi, which originated as an ingenious method developed by the ancient Ainu (native Japanese) to fix broken pottery. Books on the subject on Amazon are far more likely to be found in the self-help section than in art and crafts. I wanted to roll my eyes at this. After all, we have enough magical “Japanese Art of X” things going around (though perhaps one less since Marie Kondo called it quits) as it is. Sometimes you just want a project without delving into your childhood trauma.
But I’d be lying if I said there wasn't at least some truth to the notion that fixing things rather than discarding them, not only gives them a second life, but somehow brings them back better. Ceramics and pottery artfully repaired with kintsugi are captivating to look at.
I hope, by arming myself with the skills to repair the meaningful things in my life, I’ll not only keep using them until I die but also pass them off in better condition than when I got them.
After all, what I’m handing off isn’t only a set of kitchenware, but rather a history and lineage of love.