Grammy’s Pan

Chink…chink…

We were celebrating the completion of a test in our language module by watching a couple shows from the Numb3rs TV series on our computer when we heard this unusual sound coming from the space in our apartment we call a kitchen.

Chink…chink…

It wasn’t much of a sound.  I just thought it was some dishes drying on the counter rearranging themselves.  Perhaps a gecko was entertaining himself on them disturbing their delicate balance.

Chink…chink…

We thought about ignoring the two sounds.  But Ingrid and I both share a sense of curiosity and wonder and desire to want to answer the question “Why?”.  (That’s one of the reasons why we like shows like Numb3rs and why we enjoy living in different cultures.)  So with a click of the pause button we’re off to the kitchen.

At first everything looked normal.  Then I noticed that the 9x9 inch glass baking pan that had been drying upside down on the counter was cracked into two pieces.  I don’t know why it decided to break at that moment—maybe it’s time had just come.

We have not used the pan much since we moved here as we do not have much of an oven, but Ingrid had made a recipe called “Yorky Beef Pie” that evening—a recipe we found in a free cookbook I had picked up in a Shaw’s grocery store in Portsmouth, New Hampshire about 30 years ago—probably close to the time I had acquired the pan.

The baking pan had belonged to my grandmother and I acquired it after she died in late fall, 1979.  I remember the day she died.  It was my last month at University and I was in my apartment when the phone rang.  For some reason I knew it was my dad calling (which would be unusual as typically my mom would initiate calls) and that he was calling to tell me my grandmother had died.  I don’t know why I knew this—she had not been particularly ill.  But so it was.

My grandfather had died several years earlier.  I did not know him all that well—I think perhaps that as a young child I was a bit too annoying to have around.  My Mom tells me that I am a lot like him in many ways, especially in my love of the outdoors and my curiosity about the natural world.
(Interestingly, I alone among my siblings carry the brown eyes from my mother’s side.)
 
My grandmother had a birthday a day apart from mine and we would sometimes celebrate together.  One of the few photos of my grandmother I have with me here in Thailand is one of the two of us with a birthday cake.  I usually tout this photo so as to show that I onece had hair.  Today I will show it to celebrate my grandmother and all the good things I have acquired through my parents and grandparents—whether through genes or through upbringing.



We will miss the pan—not so much for its intrinsic value but because it was a reminder of some precious people in my life as a child.

(And special thanks to my Mom who made the cake.)