My new room is wine-red. The rest of the house is painted in pale, neutral colors. The dining room is a light purple and the “library” a honey yellow. With the exception of the library, my room is perhaps the most outgoing, in color. The last I ever sat at my type writer was in a much different room. In a different city, actually. It was a white room with pink stained carpet and bright green curtains that I seriously considered setting on fire the entire month of September, last year, freshman year. To me, that room, however outdated, was comfortable. I hadn’t been there long, eight months like any other student living away from home. Now, “home”, I haven’t been here long, either, as our family has moved into a new one.
I’ve noticed a strange trend with myself; I call any place to sleep “home”. Any place that offers surfaces I can rest books upon, a window ledge, room for a large vase of flowers, and a place for all my pictures to stand. Walking bare feet on hardwood, hearing the sound of the shower, and Frank Sinatra in the evening are familiar to me. Frank and I go way back to when I first discovered him when I was thirteen. He’s been with me since. I have a postcard with a picture of Marilyn Monroe on the front of it, and it is leaning against a vase of a dozen dried roses. My vintage Nancy Drews that I had collected and bought from a book store beside ‘My Favorite Ice-Cream Shoppe’ as a girl, are all stacked on my mirrored night table by the window. It’s a lovely image. Especially with my “old-fashioned” phone resting on outdated vogues. I’m listening to “Pennies From Heaven” by Sinatra. I hope you’ve heard the tune. It was recorded in 1962. And it sounds exactly like 1962. I want you to think pearls, and I want you to think fur coats and scarves, and I want you to think of small dining tables with little lamps on them, Cadillac’s, shiny shoes, and old fashioned love. The subway steam kind-of-love. The “let me get the door for you” kind of love. Red lipstick love. And all those billboard signs and advertisements, the (now) vintage ones where the women in them always look stunned or about to fall asleep with their glossy lips and small hips. I want you to think red carpet at the movies. The “Yes, sir” and “yes, ma’am” right alongside the milkman and mashed potatoes and peas every night (I don’t think anyone ever ordered Chinese in the 60’s. Maybe The Beatles)
This is “Pennies From Heaven” by Sinatra, 1962 and hearing it stream from my player makes this home, to me. It could be Christmas for all I know.
When I was thirteen I saw Cadillac’s. As I did freshman year. And as I do now, a sweltering hot uncomfortable evening in July where I’m certain all the fireflies of the world have gathered to celebrate their 4th of July just outside my window. This evening couldn’t get any warmer.
I always feel honored to be among a persons things, to be in someone’s “home” or some part of it. A person is not defined by their things, surely, but there are “things”, images or objects, that often remind people of certain others or their so-called “home”. I was overjoyed to receive a postcard from a friend traveling the world who had sent a postcard with an image I’ve always loved; “The Singing Butler” by Jack Vettriano. The postcard reads: “I found this in Edinburgh and had to send it to you. It’s one of those things I’m not sure I could send many other people on my list… you dig it?” It rests on my dresser drawer. Dig and dug.
I think it’s most peculiar how people grow to know one another. An image or the way certain words are said, or perhaps what is said, can remind us of someone else. The way something is arranged; be it in music or the way fine china is set. Anything, really. I think most have experienced at least a fraction of that fondness or familiarity in details that can often remind us of a particular someone. Sometimes we take pictures when this happens.
The inevitable sentimental, to me, is the greatest. Incomparable, really, when you experience that moment of recognition. It’s a big “Hello Dolly” and feels like old New Orleans. Couldn’t get anymore smug.
I want to write about my grandmother’s sugar bowl. It is what has inspired me, after months of delay, to write. Grandma’s sugar bowl.
It’s not extraordinary. You could find one similar in a pawn shop. It’s not delicate enough to be found in an antique shop. I’d cry to find it on an abandoned table in a flee market. Even so, it’s just the sort of object that would have such a fate. A flee market fate.
It’s a thick glass. It looks frosted and it has two little handles on the side of it. The lid is never on it. The rim of it, like the handles, have gold trimming, now faded. It always looks clean and it is kept in the mirrored armoire by the table we all used to gather ‘round. It’s more of a sugar cup than a bowl, really. As a little girl I’d always lick my index finger and put it in the sugar “bowl”. I didn’t think anyone would notice. I don’t think anyone did, really. How unfortunate for those of you who are reading this and know the sugar bowl. Tragic, really!
As a girl I’d steal sugar from it until I had my fix of sugar and cavities. I eventually grew out of this habit and it became an object almost always on the table after dinners when it was time for coffee. In my teen years it always sat in my reach and I’d scratch at the handles as I’d talk nervously. I was a nervous teenager. I would tell my grandmother what had happened at school and it was upsetting to both her and I. The highlight of school for me, during junior high, was grandma’s house. I knew she’d be waiting for me on the steps outside. If it was nice outside we’d sit and talk. If it wasn’t, we’d go inside and she’d make coffee. Put out the sugar bowl and stick a spoon in it “Okay, bella”
When I went to visit my grandmother one night, last December, she had made us cookies and coffee. Naturally, the bowl was there. She had teased me that evening. “Why aren’t you on a date?” I remember stirring the sugar with a tea spoon. “I don’t know”. I talked and she listened. The sugar bowl, too. I left her house late that evening. Snowflakes came down to meet me.
Should it ever break, the sugar bowl that is, I’d take it as a very bad sign. I’m not trying to sell this sugar bowl to you, nor am I trying to sell you anything, but it really is so much more than a sugar bowl!
I sat alone at her kitchen table one evening after work. Dazed and exhausted from the work day I just sat there holding my head, no thoughts, at ease, and I noticed the bowl for the first time. It was so old. It hadn’t changed. No part of it broken. The sugar still as sweet as ever. I invested my thoughts into this sugar bowl. Where it had been. Where I had been. It was only an object yet it comforted me in a way no book has or anything of intentional sentimental value. It was and is a reminder that nothing could be sweeter. All those times of taking from it, from “how” to “why”, is remarkable. I often work myself into a knot when I consider the fate of the sugar bowl. I don’t care for possessions though this one I do. Wherever it will sit sweet, I will call home. It tells me everything is okay even when it feels like everything is not. It tells me that things change and the reality of love does not. It can’t talk but it can say “I miss you”. It knows the state of mind I am in. It won’t change, it can’t. It’s never been near empty.
If you ever look at photographs of old chateaux’s in France, not the excessively big ones but the so-called “home”, you’ll notice the interior of them have not been remodeled. Everything from walls to wine are ancient. Having Provence in mind, let me say my comfort in this life lies in my own châteaux. Photographs and that which grows sweeter in time, like wine.
I’ll always see the sugar bowl in memory being pushed towards me by my grandmother’s hands: “take some”. It is comfort and life all over again. Sugar in my châteaux.
