The boys and I visited my grandparents this Saturday while Ry was at a birthday party, and my grandmother gave me my birthday present. She gave a bowl...that's right, a bowl. And, let me asure you, that bowl was one of the best birthday presents I've ever received.
You see, it's not just any bowl...it's THE bowl. The bowl that has lovingly held the homemade bread dough for my family for almost 50 years now. It's THAT bowl. A bowl my grandfather bought for my grandmother in the canal zone...as in the Panama Canal zone, while they were stationed and living in Bogota, Columbia.
It has held the countless Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve dinner breads and rolls for decades. It's also held the bread dough when a little girl used to beg Grandma to let her help her make bread.
But really the bread (although it is the BEST bread I've ever eaten) is the least of what it holds.
It holds memories...memories of a thousand hours spent at my grandparents' house on Fairmont Drive. Friday nights and Saturday mornings in a skinny galley kitchen watching my grandmother prepare meals and bake treats. I hardly remember her anywhere else in that house...always in the kitchen yelling through the pass-through window, if needed.
It holds history...it symbolizes a bygone era of simpler times. Yes, I know that sounds cliche, but it's also true. It symbolizes a time period when making homemade bread was the norm...not the exception. My grandmother also gave me a Better Homes and Garden cookbook from the 1950s with the bowl. I was especially intrigued with the section at the beginning titled, "Busy Days Meals." Those "simple" meals included an entree, two sides, and a dessert. Our "Busy Day Meals" these days include the question "do you want fries with that?"
It holds love...most importantly. It holds the love of grandparents that have steadfastly supported and loved their grandchildren and now, great-grandchildren for a lifetime now. Whether it's baking bread or banana pudding, or watching sick kids, or attending preschool graduations...my grandparents have always been there. And, for that, I am grateful.
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