I recently retrieved these 38 spoons from my mother’s house, and they now sit in the corner of my apartment bedroom. I look at them and wonder what purpose they will ever serve. I won’t be feeding my future children with these tiny spoons. I won’t be setting a table with them, along with the special silverware, during some future formal dinner party. Unlike rare coins or baseball cards, they won’t gain value as they age.
I acquired my first spoon on a family vacation 11 years ago, when I was 9. I was in a gift shop surrounded by miles and miles of corn and hay fields somewhere around Boone, Iowa. The rustic shop was in the basement of an old farmhouse stuck in a 1920s time warp. I struggled to find a nifty souvenir, going back and forth between a T-shirt and a shot glass.
I knew that my best friend had a rack filled with shot glasses, and I wanted to return home with something different. I picked up a generic gray T-shirt with “Iowa” arched across it in black print.
That’s when the elderly little shopkeeper — who looked old enough to be the original owner of the farmhouse — slowly approached me and said, softly, “You don’t want that, sweetie. You’ll grow out of it in a couple of months. Don’t you want something that will make you remember Iowa forever?” Looking back on it now, the most memorable thing about Iowa was that sweet little lady thinking that Iowa was by any means worth remembering.
She persuaded me to put down the boring T-shirt and follow her over to a table full of her “favorite, special collector’s items.” There I found my first souvenir spoon. It was only a little bit longer than my pointer finger, and it featured a picture of Mamie Doud Eisenhower. I knew absolutely nothing about Mamie Doud Eisenhower, or why she qualified to represent Iowa on my spoon. Nor have I learned anything about the former first lady since I was 9, except for this fact: She was born in Boone, Iowa. Regardless, my random Mamie Doud Eisenhower purchase would kick off a series of meaningful travels.
My parents had just split up, and the most valuable assets my mother acquired from the divorce were her two daughters and a time share. Seeing her lost, sad and distraught left me feeling the need to fix her. So I came up with a magnificent distraction, an idea that would involve plenty of traveling, and plenty of opportunities to build new memories. I pitched the idea one evening over a Hamburger Helper dinner, hoping that she’d bite. “I want to visit all 50 states before I turn 18,” I said.
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