The Broken Dish

About a month ago, I was cooking the Sunday lunch. The roast was in a casserole dish that had been in the family for years and years. There was nothing special about this dish. It was a rather drab brown, stoneware rectangular dish with gently sloping sides of about two inches in depth. It was not a particularly attractive dish to look at. It was just there, and it was used for everything that was going into the oven. It seemed to be just the right size for all the dishes I cooked, and I rarely used another cooking utensil except for turkeys and large roasts.

During this Sunday lunch preparation, I removed the tin foil lining and picked up the dish to put it in the sink. Because it had been sitting on top of the stove for sometime, I thought it would be quite cool and so didn’t bother to put on the oven mitt. It was not cool. It was hot, hot, hot. It was off the oven top, over the floor and on the way to the sink before I realized that my fingers were burning. I dropped it with a shriek of pain. Upon making contact with the floor, my beloved casserole dish broke into a thousand pieces.

My shriek of pain, turned to tears of anger, and then painful tears of anguish because I had lost a piece of family history. Crowded thoughts of many years suddenly appeared in my head, particularly of my parents and two sisters. This dish had reminded me of the love and warmth we enjoyed as a family, together with the heartaches and tears (not too often) which were not enjoyed.

It reminded me of a quieter and much more serene life many years ago; a time when families interacted and entertained themselves instead of relying on television. A time when life was much gentler and certainly less complicated. I suppose I could go on, but what is the point The casserole dish is no more and neither is our youth. I guess that was the reason for my tears.