Wooden Spoon

Wooden Spoon  /ˈwʊdn spun/

—noun

1. A figure intent on erasing itself.
2. Corner-blind; a neck and a cheek, only.
3. The entire faceless darling an instinct of soup.

–origin

1. There was a time when a wooden spoon might be a girl’s only worldly belonging. If afforded some clarity before death, she might will it to her daughter, or tuck it quietly in her waistcoat.
2. In 1608, shortly after disembarking the good vessel Mary and Margaret at the banks of the James River, Martha Forrest took inventory. The New World in her nostrils. King James a minor, weightless, somewhere planet. An ocean three-months long behind her. She caught her forehead in her palm and whistled. Then she vomited on the shore.
3. Martha called for her barrel of goods and saw, with satisfaction, its weight mark the sand. Inside the barrel, dug amongst blankets and candlesticks, a stew pot and iron wedge, was a small spoon; A chip of sentimental wood. Her husband, already ashore, carved it for her when his first wife caught the Scarlet fever.
4. A month later, knowing they would bury her naked, she gave her clothes and spoon to a young maid called Anne. Now the only woman in the colony, Anne married a carpenter who gave her spoons of her own, and Martha’s slipped behind a bureau, chewed to dust by anxious mice.

–idiom

1. I can smell the future. Bread before its baked, as a reminder to make it, is strongest. A train from Brussels moans to a passing cyclist to remind her to call her mother. Mine made challah for Thanksgiving. Rope after rope, dough dyed yellow with yolks, waiting to be braided and brushed to glisten with egg and water. Another two breads-worth is rising in the kitchen-aide bowl. I tease her. Laughing, she smacks my ass with a wooden spoon.
2. The house hadn’t been renovated yet. The kitchen was a butter yellow showbox with one square lace-curtained window that faced the grass. His mother, thinner then, was no cook but loved to sit in a stool and make mayonaise by hand. An open soup bowl and a whisk moving in slow concentric circles, just slower than a resting heart beat. Adding oil one spoon at a time, chin leaning on a hand whose elbow rested on the counter.
3. In the spring I saw her in rubber clogs, calico skirts gathered in one hand, a wooden spoon raised high in the other. Racing toward the line of laundry, which was by now completely on fire.