The Legacy of a Spoon
Musings from the Pipeline, by Janet Fix
I hold in my hand a spoon. It’s 50 years old, this spoon, “older than you are,” says my mom, as if that in itself is something to behold. But it is neat, this spoon. It’s from a silver set she was given the December before I was born, during a “girls night out” event in honor of my mother and li’l ol’ me-to-be. Mom has only two items left from the whole set: two spoons. She’s keeping one, and she gave this one to me. I guess that makes this spoon part of the family legacy.
I will feed my new granddaughter with this spoon, to further inspire the tale. I wonder what weight it will carry in terms of importance another 50 years from now? Will we even be eating with spoons ? Will this spoon no longer be functional, but an apparatus in a shadow box of antiques? Oh!, will the definition of an antique have changed such that it would not even be one?
I think about all this in terms of legacy. Authors are encouraged to publish so they can “leave a legacy.” But I don’t agree so much with that. I think most of us write to leave an impact today. And that’s how it should be. What happens upon death is a bonus, or not. I write for “now,” for you and me. Where my words go upon my death concerns me far less than the fate of this spoon.
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