Skillet

Quite a few years ago my grandmother on my dad's side had a tradition.  At Christmas when we were all together she would invite the females in the family to go down into the basement and... okay now, don't go playing horror music in the background. This isn't a Grimm Brother's fairy tale or a Stephen King novel. Just because the basement overflowed with stuff a mass murderer could hide behind, had poor lighting, spiders and an old wood furnace that cast weird shadows doesn't mean it was creepy.....

Where was I?  Oh yes.  She invited us all down into the basement where she kept a collection of, well, things.  Dishes shaped like chickens.  Tea cups printed with flowers. Baskets with little gold plaques attached to them. A scythe. Shelves of filmy glassware.  Old glass coke bottles. (I'm pretty sure I snagged some of those and they are languishing in my parents' basement now.) And when she had us down there she encouraged us to pick one or two things to take for our own houses.  A gift from her house to ours.  So one time I, with my infinite cooking skills and need, picked a heavy cast iron skillet.

It now hangs above my stove.

I managed to rust the whole thing once, not realizing cast iron skillets cannot be washed and allowed to air dry.  That took time to rectify.

Now though, I know to dry it thoroughly with a towel.

Mostly it is used as decoration.

But whenever I look at it I think of my grandmother. My childhood visiting her and grandpa's farm.  The peacocks waking us up by "screaming" in the morning.  The smell of milking parlors.  The taste of fresh corn.  Making homemade ice cream on the steps of the farm house.  A whole lifetime of memories. 

From her house to mine. 

 ...

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I'd picked the scythe....