The Pink Bowl: Not for Salads

     I remember laughing when mommy called me to tell me the pink bowl had finally cracked/broken. Yes, I call her mommy. Even now as a 47 year old grown adult she is still mommy. So many memories are linked to that bowl. We called it the pink bowl but it wasn’t a true pink. It was more of a magenta shade of pink. The bowl was plastic. It was probably the size of a salad bowl. You know the type of bowl you place a large salad in to pass around the table at family dinner. It was like that. Only it never held salad (that I can remember), let alone get passed around a dinner table.

     You see, growing up we did not eat dinner together as a family. Rather, daddy (yes he was called daddy even after I went to college) sat in his chair in the living room and mommy didn’t always eat. At least I rarely remember seeing her eat dinner at the same time as us. Anyway, us kids ate in the kitchen at a small table. We were to be quiet and eat. This way we wouldn’t disturb daddy who was watching tv nearby in the living room. We also were not allowed to get seconds until daddy was finished eating. Needless to say, dinner was not a fun family event like you see in the movies. No one asked how our day was, there was no family grace, and there was no passing of the “salad”. 

     I remember this one time when we had baked chicken. I was not a fan of baked chicken at all. I always felt like it was a little slimy and I did not like to see the veins and bones. I even made up a jingle about my dislike of baked chicken which I sadly cannot recall the words to (baked chicken is really slimy…). But, we ate what was served. I remember picking up my two chicken legs and placing them close together. I then made them kick out one at a time like they were dancing as part of a kickline. This of course made my sisters giggle and then daddy yelled at us to shut up. I was always trying to make my sisters laugh at dinner. I guess I wanted dinner time to be less stressful. I wanted the happy smiling faces I saw on tv. Those families always looked so happy. 

     So all of this to say, we did not have a family dinner with a big salad passed around in the pink bowl. That bowl served a different purpose. The primary function of this bowl was for washing. No, not washing dishes. It was for washing ourselves. Growing up poor and living in an old house comes with struggles. One of those struggles being issues with plumbing and heating. You see there were times when we had no water. It gets cold in the winter. Our water was spring water that had to be pumped up from the bottom of the hill. And sometimes it would freeze. But no worries, the pink bowl was ready and available. Other times we had water but no hot water. Again, the trusty reliable pink bowl was ready to serve our needs. 

     All this to say that we often found ourselves in the need to heat water up on the stove and pour it into the pink bowl. We would then wash all the important parts using a bar of soap, washcloth, and the warm water from the pink bowl. There were even times when us girls would shave our legs over the pink bowl. I remember one winter when the pink bowl was in use, I just wanted to feel the rush of water over my body. So I jumped in a VERY cold winter shower hopping from foot to foot and fighting the urge to scream. I just wanted to feel fully clean.

     So hearing of the demise of the pink bowl was both funny and sad. Funny because it brought back so many memories of washing from that bowl (I think burned Thanksgiving rolls may have been served out of it as well). Which are not really funny or pleasant memories….but in our family we turn our trauma into jokes. So I had a good laugh upon hearing of its death. And the simple fact that we all knew what that bowl was for and it had lived a long life. Sad because it reminded me of the struggles we faced growing up. The things my teachers never knew and even many of my friends. Sad because even in the laughter over the demise of the bowl I also felt a great loss. The loss of childhood.