Spoon Theory

During a sort out which involved the deconstruction of beds and movement of other assorted furniture, a small navy blue box was unearthed from my past.

In it is a collection of silver teaspoons and sugar tongs given by my late father as a gift to my late mother for Christmas 1953.

Running my fingers across the delicate tarnished stems of the spoons, smelling the musty aroma of my childhood home, and reading the heartfelt but typically disconnected emotion in the words of my father’s familiar, comforting, angular script I knew I wanted to write about the spoons, even though I didn’t know why.

In the early part of the 21st century Christine Miserandino, who suffered from lupus, came up with “Spoon Theory” as a way of describing the way that energy depletes in people with chronic illness.

Explaining to a friend in a cafe the way that her energy reserves were used up she gathered a handful of spoons and demonstrated how tasks many of us might take for granted would remove the spoons until there were no spoons left and all energy expired.

One of the reasons that I find the box of spoons my father gave to my mother so touching is because it represents a stage in their relationship never outwardly visible in my lifetime, or so I thought.

All through my own childhood and into adulthood if spoons were used to measure the romantic energy in their relationship I could say that I lived with parents who appeared to be all out of spoons.

My father never spoke a bad word about my mother, although I heard quite a few that were directed towards her. Nothing especially nasty, but not loving.

My mother was constantly frustrated with my father and made no secret of it.

I’d never seen this little box of spoons when my parents were alive which made me wonder whether spoon theory extends to energy being absent when the spoons are not visible.

The big surprise came when my father died and I saw grief in my mother at odds with the way I’d perceived their relationship.

My mother approached her grieving with such gusto it was as if, all of a sudden, the spoons has been taken out and cleaned.

In fact, they had been there all the time.

All through the years of constant parental conflict, because only ambivalence suggests an absence of spoons.

All through the years of my father’s long decline towards death, because my mother’s nursing of him with the same dedication and selflessness with which she approached everyone else in her life is anathema to an absence of spoons.

In my naivety, I believed for a long time that love only looked a certain way but over time I have learned that we never really know anything about the abundance or otherwise of other people’s spoons.