The Mixing Bowl

My grandmother who preferred to be called 'Granny' used a large thick yelloware bowl for mixing various concoctions. It held bread, cookies, cake mixes, Yorkshire pudding, hot cross buns and a host of other things. Time itself drifts back and forward in that bowl.

The bowl is precious to me because it invokes her image. It is a total experience that includes not only the ingredients, but also the order of them, their scent and hers, her well-worn, gentle hands kneading, stirring, mixing, and blending. I wasn't supposed to be in her kitchen when she was working because she didn't like to be disturbed when she was cooking, but I often found myself there because Granny's kitchen was a place that was cosy and friendly.

My grandmother had been trained as a cook in England and knew her trade very well. As she mixed, she often told me stories from her past that encompassed Queen Victoria to Elizabeth II. She would tell me about Prince Edward who was for a long time suspected to be Jack the Ripper. The first killing was in 1888, White Chapel, London, the year she was born, and were talked about for generations later. She had extensive knowledge of the royal family and it was in the warmth of the wood from the stove that she told them. It was fascinating to hear her East Anglia accented speech that she never completely lost. She often spoke of Norwich where she was born and where she had spent the first twenty-one years of her life. Her first-hand knowledge of history sparked what would be for me an appreciation of history.

As her hands moved, so too did her sapphire twinkling eyes above the bowl. Her pale English complexion was accentuated by rose-tinted cheeks where just below, was soft lips that turned up at the corners. The sound of her laughter echoed the tenderness of her mouth. Her face was round with a slightly pointed chin. The short hair that topped her features was the colour of white flour. Juices often stained the white-faded apron around her ample waist as they flew out of the bowl when she mixed furiously with one of wire whisk beaters. She described modern appliances as lacking 'touch', which were so often imparted into her dishes. Her diminutive stature camouflaged massive character.

Whenever her teeth peeked through her lips when she laughed heartily, they made me giggle, because I so often saw them in the glass alongside the bed we shared for many years. The gusto of her mirth invoked tears down her face that she taught me to do by example.

By having Granny's piece of her yelloware mixing bowl in my possession, where she is permanently etched, my hands followed hers. The continuum of the two of us together is a living memory that resides in that bowl -- it is irreplaceable just like her memories.