The summer before I left for college, my grandmother took me to the knitting store to choose yarn for the afghan she wanted to knit for me. Except for the year I spent in Europe when I was a junior, the afghan has never been out of my reach. For the past fifty years it has kept me warm and  kept her close. It is my go to blanket when I want to take an afternoon nap.

Our kids spread the afghan over a dining table for their hideaways and pulled it out for sleepovers.  I can still see my grandmother sitting on the couch in the den, knitting needles softly clicking blocks of blue into being.  We didn’t choose soft wool yarn or crisp cotton either, but some sort of sturdy no-nonesense polyester blend that washes easily and successfully. It has held up well, looking as bright and fresh as the day she gave it to me. Gathering it around me, I am shawled within her love. The connection is physical.  What she touched still touches me.

When my grandmother died I brought home her set of  hammered Club Aluminum cookware. Like the afghan, like my grandmother, the pots and pans are straightforward and uncomplicated. They get the job done. For over twenty years I’ve loved knowing that our hands touch across the decades every time I pick up a skillet or set a pot on the stove.

This Thanksgiving the handle of the smallest skillet broke in half, splitting away from the bolt that had held it in place for decades. There is no way to replace it. How many meals were cooked in this pan over her lifetime? Had she received the set as a wedding present? Married during the Depression she told me that she and my grandfather were so poor they didn’t have a pot to you-know-what in. Maybe she bought them when my grandfather’s law practice made such a purchase possible. They are the only pots and pans she ever used. I’d imagine they are at least 90 years old by now, which means my father grew up eating meals cooked in them as well. He too is now gone and so I cannot ask him; even if I could, I doubt he’d remember. But he would remember her blintzes and the sweet canned blueberries she stirred into warm indigo syrup. He’d remember the corn fritters, too

I’m not sure yet what I’ll do with the pan. I can’t throw it away.  Perhaps I can use it as a shallow planter? Enhance it somehow with a glue gun and baubles and hang it from a tree branch in the garden? Eventually it will become a why-did-she-hold-on-to-this? left-behind. So be it.