Spatula love

Knowing what matters most

I don’t have much left of my father in terms of objects. A few photographs. A pair of hair-cutting scissors he used in his barbershop, a luggage tag written in his own hand, and a spatula. He’s been dead for 44 years, and everything my mother had of his was lost when she lost her house to the bank. It is a long, sad story for another day.

It is the spatula that I love the most.

Why?

Because he was the pancake man and this was the spatula he used to turn the pancakes. It is thin and metal and just right for that task. The handle is wooden and feels just right in your hand.

Because we used to cook together. Summers were for blackberry picking and cobbler making together. It was our “thing” every summer, from when I was a little kid, barely old enough to reach the kitchen counter. We cooked the kind of cobbler where the dough magically rises up through the blackberries to form the crust. You can imagine how cool I thought that was.

Because our vacations were always camping in our Nimrod po…