Column: ‘Do we get more beautiful with age?’
Published: 10-11-2024 4:11 PM |
I bought this hand-carved salad serving bowl years ago at a farmers market, so long ago that I don’t recall from which town. Over the years, I have filled this bowl with greens, snap peas, carrots, peppers, tossed with my home-made vinaigrette. Food as comfort, connection, love, served from this ageless bowl.
I know wood needs oil just as my skin needs lotion, so why I disregarded the bowl’s needs for years is a mystery.
The bowl persevered as long as it could. First small, then longer, a crack appeared on the rim. “Oil me!,” this crack pleaded, as if it were the Tin Man. Because the bowl had always been able to perform its job, I assumed it didn’t need my attention. Now I realized it needed my care.
Day by day, I caressed the wood with oil, hoping to prevent further evidence of so many years of neglect. Day by day, the wood absorbed the oil and began to glisten.
Months passed. Perhaps the bowl will remain safe except for the one crack on its edge.
Then one evening a potluck dinner guest commented, “Looks like your bowl sprang a leak!” I lifted the bowl to find the vinaigrette puddled on the counter. On inspection, I saw a new one-inch crack on the bottom of the bowl. I took a deep breath and sighed.
Is it time to retire this senior salad bowl? When is the right time to set aside the old for the new?
Certainly there are other handcrafted bowls, carved from oak, cherry, even maple, like mine, but functional. And perhaps more lovely. On the other hand, bowls are not interchangeable, not when there is a history, a relationship.
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I’ve had this bowl longer than I’ve had my children. The children have left and this bowl is still here. We’ve been together a long time.
I couldn’t give up on this bowl just because it was no longer able to hold its liquid.
Carefully following directions on the wood glue tube, I wiped the cracks clean on both sides and smoothed the glue into and over the cracks.
Next morning, the glue was hard and barely visible.
Now for the test.
Instead of using my renowned vinaigrette, I pour in an inch of water, lift the bowl over the sink, and wait.
And wait.
No drips! Once again, the bowl works.
I am reminded of the Japanese practice of kintsugi — “golden joining” — repairing broken pottery by mending the break with lacquer dusted with powdered gold, silver or platinum. Perhaps wood glue is my gold dust. I see the cracks through the glue, a reminder, a warning, about the cracks of past neglect.
Or, from the kintsugi philosophy that breakage and repair are part of an object’s history, to be embraced and made visible, not disguised, these cracks are a celebration of age.
This bowl, my bowl, is still beautiful to me, perhaps more so for what I know it’s been through. Do we get more beautiful with age?
I like to think the bowl’s owner, even with the imperfections of time, can smile at herself the way, as she fills it with greens, she smiles at this imperfect bowl.
Diane Roston is a psychiatrist and director of psychiatric training at West Central Behavioral Health, and is on the clinical faculty in the Department of Psychiatry at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth.