persimmon cottage

Yes, this blog begins with a fork. Forks for eating, as in silverware, and also the forks in the road that cause us to – briefly, or for an agonizingly long time – contemplate which way to go. In my case, both were on the table.

For some absolutely unknown-to-me reason, our supply of forks has been dwindling. Perhaps a few have found their way to school in lunchboxes and haven’t migrated back home. Maybe I took some to work and they were similarly tossed in with the lunchroom supplies there (although I’ve looked). One or three may be lurking in dusty unused corners of the house. In any event, we’re low on forks. What was, a few months ago, a scramble to find enough forks in preparation for a dinner party with friends and kids has become a near-nightly affair to ensure enough forks for our family dinner of three. Plus Mommy eating occasionally with spoons, and some meals becoming hands-on.

So, what to do. At first, I thought, I deserve new flatware. I will go to a local grocery or department store, or better yet our local cool earthy kitchen and other things supply store, and buy myself a nice new (post-divorce) set of flatware to call my very own, and they will all match.

But I have been standing at this fork in the road for a while. The fork of: how do I want to live my life? Now, at mid-life – or approaching it anyway – I seem to be reviewing everything, taking stock, making choices. For some time now, I have been becoming more and more clear about how I want to live my life. And some of those elements are: with purpose, to be of service, to live only with what is essential, to do no harm. To recognize and act with reverence about the interconnectedness of all things. This blog is an effort to chronicle those choices, adventures and missteps, to share what I learn with others. No profit intended, save the good feeling of sharing honestly with others so that y’all might get some new ideas, or avoid some of my mistakes, or just generally know you’re not alone out there trying to make things better one human at a time.

Back to forks. I then began thinking, if I buy a new set of flatware, what do I do with the now double amounts of knives and spoons? I have diligently trying to pare down, get rid of all the extra stuff we have in this house. It’s taken layers and layers of doing, and there are more to go. But I realized I did not want to add more forks to the mix only to have yet more knives and spoons I don’t need. I wondered, where can I get just forks?

Goodwill. That’s the answer! I will go to Goodwill and buy a few extra forks. They will not match the rest of the silverware, but who cares? I will have bought not retail, with presumably no packaging, and then only have a few more forks, which is what I need.

Some restless days or weeks considering what to do, battling the voices that say “you’re not really a grown up if your silverware is mismatched” (who was responded to very quickly by the frugal eco-purist “grown ups don’t give a shit about matching silverware, because they know what is really important.”)

And then today dawned. And in those hazy moments of first awakening, I had a vision of silverware. Only this time, it was my grandmother’s silverware. You know, the sets (there are two) she gifted to me that we pull out every year at Thanksgiving, spend a long time polishing them, and then put them away again for the whole rest of the year? Except that for the last couple of years I’ve been too lazy to even do that, and so we’ve just used the regular silverware? Well, what about using that as our regular silverware?

I could not even believe that in all the time I have been wondering about the missing forks, and trying to decide how best to remedy the problem, I had not once thought of my grandmother’s silver. We actually have forks, and they’ve been right there in the dining room with us all along! So, that is what we will try. I’ll pull that silver out, and find a few forks, polish them, and start using them. No purchase necessary, no packaging, no consumerism, no cost (I have silver polish already). And if I feel like eating with matching silver, I’ll pull out some of the spoons and knives and polish them up too. And we’ll have my Gram with us, of a sort, at mealtimes, which is extra special.

So that’s how I’ve solved this particular fork. A truly sustainable choice, using what you already have!