Grandma's Bowl

There are so many things I love about having chickens.

Simple,

Wonderful,

Little Things

And I think that until you have chickens you can't really understand all those little things completely.

Today was a very special day, a day I get to enjoy one of my favorite "little things".  For the first time in about 12 years I got to put my own fresh eggs in my Grandma's Bowl.  Silly right?  Maybe.  But for me, so much love, and so many memories are brought back in that one simple action.

My Grandma Cox passed away many years ago, when my oldest daughter Meghann was just a baby.  My Grandparents always had chickens.  And maybe my love for having my own eggs comes from those memories.  When she passed away I got many of her wonderful bowls.  And I do very much treasure them.  

Since I have such a love for cooking I have always loved beautiful dishes.  And Grandma's bowls were so wonderful.  I remember exclaiming how beautiful her bowls were one day and she laughed.  She told me that that silly bowl came free in a box of oatmeal.  Nothing special about it at all.  

Nothing special!?!!!  

Was she serious? 

 But my grandparents were very simple people.  She didn't have beautiful china or expensive things.  I think she found it hard to understand how I could think that something so simple would be incredible.

For years I filled this beautiful green bowl with my fresh eggs.  And every time I pull it out of the refrigerator I think of my wonderful Grandma.  

Oh how I wish I could talk to her again and have her tell me stories about her childhood and her parents.  

After I moved from the farm and no longer had fresh eggs I continued to use this special bowl for my store bought eggs.  And although I still always thought of Grandma when I got eggs out, it never held the "magic" that it always seemed to hold with my own eggs.  Today the "magic" returns.  It gives me so much joy to put my own eggs in this amazing bowl again.  

All of our eggs to date. 

And I hope Grandma is looking down and smiling to see that this "silly" bowl brings me such joy.

Sure, I know that using the bowl every day could mean that someday it gets broken.  And I have often thought about retiring it to the china hutch for "safe keeping".  Somehow in my heart I feel like using the bowl is what I should be doing.  What joy does it bring locked away in a cabinet?  And even if it someday does get broken I will have all the memories of using it for years and years.

So, should my children or grandchildren ever have any of my dishes or anything else, I hope they will use those items every day.  I hope they will remember me with happy wonderful memories that make them smile the way I smile and think of my Grandma Cox when I use her special bowls.

The top two eggs are today's eggs.  The one toward the back is from Oprah Orpington.  The one in the front is from Martha our Cuckoo Marans.  The picture doesn't totally capture how amazingly pretty this egg is.