My mother, Deb, used to collect souvenir spoons from places she had visited. When I was a little girl, she showed me this collection and helped me start my own and let me hang mine proudly with hers on the wall of my childhood bedroom. When she and my father would take us on trips around America, she would help me choose a new spoon from gift shops to add to my collection, and soon my love for both the spoons and collecting grew.
Now, years later as my spoon collection has laid in a box somewhere in my parents basement, I thought of my mother and how the spoon as a symbol is actually quite a unique shape for a metaphore of how a daughter is transformed from her mother into a seperate person, but still connected.
I created this spoon tonight, my mother's life being mapped out in the bowl of the spoon in terms of important years of her life that she told me about. The portion of the spoon that connects the bowl to the handle shows where we were, and are, connected. My life continues on the handle of the spoon, leaving space at the end to continue my life's mapping until the day I might have a daughter.
I hope to make similar spoons for my mother and grandmother (Jewel Seeger) and her and my great grandmother (Mildred Becker).
