A Tale of Utensils

I’ve had a lot going on lately.

For starters, I moved. Into my own place. My very first “own place.” Ever, in my entire 30 years.

That was a week ago. And then immediately after vomiting my belongings into my perfect little carriage house apartment on my sunny little Mission street, I went on vacation for six days. Back home, to Detroit. With my boyfriend. To introduce him to my family.

So, needless to say, I’ll be pontificating a lot in the coming days about home and family and whatnot. I’m getting there. But first, I have one profound thought about moving that I just have to get out. It can’t wait any longer…

It’s really, really amazing the way silverware distributes itself in this world.

As I was packing up my stuff in my pal Jeremy’s house on Bartlett Street, I came across one last stray knife on the coffee table that belonged to my set of silverware. Now, I LOVE that I own a complete set of silverware. That’s a rarity, it seems, for someone in my position in life. And I’d already packed that baby up. So I immediately grabbed that knife, washed it, opened up my kitchen box and was ready to throw it back in, when I realized…

Jeremy and Sandy need it more than me. Because every house in San Francisco needs silverware. It takes many, many roommates, passing through a house over years, leaving a piece behind here and there after many, many move-outs, to make for a complete “house set.” So I tossed it back on the coffee table where I found it (hey; at least it was clean now!).

And I went and took a look at what they had, just for kicks. There were pieces in the silverware drawer from at least eight different sets. Where did they all come from? Who did they all belong to originally? How long had they been in circulation?

I’d like to trace the provenance of the full set at 119A Bartlett – its utensil lineage – and determine how many hands had handled it all through the years. How many drawers each piece had resided in before coming to rest there in that musty old Victorian.

I can now say that at least one knife started out in Muskegon, Michigan, at the home of Robert and Jane Andersen, grandparents of my ex of ten years, Andrew Blair. It lived there for god knows how many years until the deaths of both, when it was packed up with the rest of its set by their daughter, Kathryn, and gifted to Andrew and I. It then moved with us to four different apartments in Detroit, Michigan. Andrew eventually reluctantly gifted the set to me in our pseudo-divorce, in exchange for some other household goods that he needed more. But the grandparents’ silverware was the one item that we actually fought about. The ONLY item. He said that silverware reminded him of eating dinner with his family when he was young. It had sentimental value.

I don’t think he’d like the fact that a piece of it is now left behind at 119A Bartlett with Jeremy and Sandy, but somehow, to me, it feels right…