On the top shelf in my kitchen cabinet, I keep two small jars, each with their own small spoon. This morning, I climbed up on the step stool to reach that top shelf, and I brought those two little jars down.
I’m getting ready to set my table for Rosh Hashanna, the Jewish New Year, which begins tomorrow at sundown.
These little jars are honey jars, and honey is a traditional Rosh Hashanna food, symbolic of our wishes for a sweet new year.
One of the jars (I think technically it’s called a mustard pot, but I have only ever used it for honey) is made of crystal, and Dave and I received it as a wedding gift 30 years ago. It was given to us by friends of my parents, who had received the same crystal jar from my mother’s parents when these friends were married in the late 1960s. My mother has one too, which she received from the parents of her friends. My brother has one. The friends’ children have them. And last year I gifted one to my son, for his holiday table. It’s like a link in a chain, connecting us through space and time and generations.
The other is metal, golden in color, shaped like an apple with a stem and a leaf. A gift from a dear friend years ago.
And just last week another dear friend gifted me a new little honey jar, a simple beautiful glass bowl with a wooden handle, which will join the others on my table this year.
I don’t write about objects very often in this space (or I try not to) because good things don’t have to be “things” - objects or possessions.
We don’t have to purchase things to know good things, we don’t have to have things or possess things, to experience goodness. There is so much goodness that is not tangible or possess-able at all - nature and kindness and friendship and experience and memory.
And yes, of course, there are objects, too.
My father used to begin every holiday meal with a “tour” of the table. He would tell us where each ritual object or item originated, what things his great grandparents carried over on a boat, which dishes belonged to whom. He would remind us that the tablecloth was cross-stitched by his grandmother, and where the candlesticks came from.
As you likely know, if you’ve been reading here for some time, my father died quite young. He left me so many gifts - of stories and lessons and ideas and ways of being in the world - and he left me some of those objects from the table, too.
But he also left me the understanding that sometimes objects are not just objects. Sometimes objects are stories. Sometimes objects are sacred.
Sometimes objects are links in a chain, connecting us through space and time and generations.
Thursday:
My niece on the occasion of her 20th birthday.
The way that so many recipes are available online at the click of a few keys, and the chefs and recipe developers who create this treasure trove of resources.
Jenny sent me a super cute picture of Dave and me from the wedding last weekend.
Now you? Tell me 3 good things?
Xo.
