polishing a piece of the past

Next Wednesday will mark one year that my precious grandmother has been in heaven. Even though she is sorely missed, I am thankful to know that she is no longer living with Alzheimer's Disease, not knowing the faces of those who were closest to her. Now all she sees is the face of Jesus and those she loved who preceeded her entry into heaven.

Over Christmas, my dad and mom, along with redhead and I, spent one night (it would have been two if it hadn't been for the dreaded stomach bug...again) at my grandparents home. The house holds many memories for me - staging childhood plays with my cousins, playing piano for a captive audience of aunts and uncles, my first viewing of "Pinwheel" on Nickelodeon (we didn't have cable when I was younger), the list could go on and on.

Once vibrant and full of life, the house now stands dark and lifeless. The two that made the house their home have passed on from this life into the next and now it simply holds their precious belongings, most of which are slowly being divided amongst their four children and 11 grandchildren.

I have been fortunate enough to receive several items of great sentimental value from my grandparent's home. My collection includes three paintings that hung in various rooms of the house, a salad plate from their everyday china that we always ate off of, a crystal serving platter and vase, and some necklaces from my grandmother's collection. All of these items hold tremendous meaning, but three items in particular are the most special - a Revere Ware stock pot and two frying pans.


I realize it probably seems a little odd for me to cherish pots and pans as sentimental items, but allow me to explain. These pots and pans are by my best guess at least 30 years old, but probably older than that. They are the only ones I ever remember my grandparents using.

I can still picture my grandfather in his bathrobe and slippers, hair unkempt from a good night's sleep, standing at the stove scrambling eggs and frying bacon in the frying pans. He always made cooking a big breakfast a priority when we came to visit and by-gosh even if you weren't hungry for a big breakfast, you were going to sit down at the table and eat something.

After breakfast was over, someone - either my grandfather or grandmother would get right back in the kitchen and scrub those pans for their next usage.

To say the pans have been well-worn is putting it mildly.

This past weekend my mother-in-law and I were in her kitchen when I noticed that the pots and pans she was using looked similar to the ones I had just inherited, with the exception being that the bottoms of her pans boasted a shiny copper color. I asked her about it and she said that her mother was meticulous about shining her cookware. And I have to say, for about 50 years old, these pans looked almost brand new. I asked about products to bring back the shine on my pans and she shared with me her secret weapon, which I immediately tried to find when I arrived home. I wasn't able to find exactly what she had, but what I did find did the trick (even if it did feel like it was singeing the top layer of my corneas).

Here is what the bottom of the large frying pan looked like before:

and here it is in a side-by-side comparison with the polished stock pot:



Here is what about 30 minutes of scrubbing and several rounds of cleaner can do (please excuse the terrible lighting):




It was a major difference.

I feel as if I have revived a piece of my past and in a strange way, honored my grandparents by loving something that was theirs, no matter how simple or mundane. To someone else, these pots and pans might be mere cooking tools, but to me they represent the passing from one era into another - the making of something old into something new again.