I have two Farberware sauce pans with lids that I use almost daily. They are the perfect sizes. One is small. Holds 16 ounces easily. Today I boiled water for coffee in the morning and right now a Mason jar of herbal tea cools beside me, heated in that small pan. The other is medium sized. I use it to make small batches of potato soup or pop popcorn. The lids are glass with solid plastic handles. These pans are nice, utilitarian and weren’t originally mine.
My great aunt died of breast cancer about five years ago. After the memorial service, her kids and grandkids and other extended family drove over to her house. It was a standard issue 1970s era bi-level. I think at least two other relatives of mine lived in houses exactly like it in different parts of Ohio. Her husband, my grandmother’s brother, had died 8 years earlier of complicatons after heart surgery. They had lived in the house for years after they sold their farmland home where they had spent a healthy and happy retirement entertaining family and friends and especially their grandchildren, who adored them.
The house was still fully furnished. My dad’s cousin, who is like an aunt to me, was stressing about selling it. Only a year after the housing crisis, banks were being meticulous and stingy about issuing home loans. I offered to buy the washer and dryer but she said they were already sold. My second cousin was standing in the backyard facing away from the house, quiet and distant. Her brother and sister-in-law were providing their young boys with entertainment in the form of light saber games that ranged from the small front yard to the small back yard. My son was thrilled with this game.
We sat at my great aunt and uncle’s kitchen table, drank coffee, and after a while it was time to go. My dad’s cousin started pulling pans out of the cupboards, offering Teflon frying pans, the toaster, a coffee maker. I said no thanks to those. Then unwillingly I accepted the two small Farberware sauce pans with lids.
I have had them for the five years now. Recently I’ve been thinking about how they were once my great aunt and uncle’s. I’ve wondered how they used them. I’ve wondered what they cooked in them. I’ve wondered who they cooked for and whether they enjoyed it. I’ve thought about how these useful and well-made pans were handed to me on the way out of my great aunt’s house on the day of her memorial service. It made me wonder how my utilitarian items will be distributed. It made me wonder about all of the things I’ll leave behind when I die and how whoever is left will encounter them. Will they go into the homes of people related to me, who have vague stories of the life I lived? Will they go into the trash? What will it be like for the person who hands these things off?
My couch, the sitting chairs, the wine cabinet that serves as a TV stand, the desk I write on–they all belonged to someone before me. Without these things my present moment would look and feel differently. I have no history on the people these things belonged to before they came into my house. The Farberware sauce pans are different. They remind me that my present is filled with the remnants of other people’s past.
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