Memory Well - Brief Article - Column

Vegetarian Times, Jan, 1999 by Grace Pearman Overman

When I was 16 and appearances meant everything, the sight of my mother's colander was enough to make my Twiggy haircut flip. It infuriated me that she would use such a beat-up utensil. The colander never sat level on the counter. Its three squat feet were bent; its aluminum bowl, dented. When my mother dumped hot spaghetti into it, the noodles would hang inelegantly over one side.

"Why don't you buy a new colander?" I would demand.

"This one is perfectly fine," she'd answer patiently.

But it was far from fine in my mind. To me, it was a depressing symbol of squareness. It was not chic. It was not keeping up with the Joneses or, in our case, the Thompsons, who had a beautiful gourmet kitchen. I'm not sure I ever actually saw their colander, but I was sure they would never have one as misshapen as ours. I vowed that when I got my first apartment, I would buy a stainless steel one with a sturdy round base, the kind I imagined hanging in the Thompsons' kitchen.

And I really intended to do that. Yet when the day finally came to buy one, all I could find was a three-footed aluminum colander, just like my mother's. But this one was shiny and new and held great promise. I was on the road to right living.

Who knows when the strainer got its first mark. Maybe it was the night I prepared vegetarian spaghetti for my boyfriend. I was too busy stirring mint and romance into the sauce to notice a colander that evening. This love would last, I thought. But the dent was what endured long after the romance cooled.

The second bump might have happened the day I attempted to make boiled peanuts, like the ones my family used to buy along Southern roadsides each summer. I boiled my concoction for a long time, then boiled it a little more. I strained the hot, salty nuts through my colander only to discover they were still tough little nuggets. How foolhardy of me to think I could re-create my entire childhood in one lonely afternoon.

The third, fourth and fifth dents likely came the year I landed my first job after college. I hosted parties during which hordes of people would crowd into my kitchen. Too many hands don't spoil the fun, but they can play havoc with kitchen utensils. My colander earned new dimples as we dumped pounds of corn on the cob into it. It caught up the luscious, yellow corn in a mountain of steaming kernels that brought forth napkins and smiles.

Time slipped by. In the summers, I filled my colander with fresh peaches to rinse and peel before turning them into a cobbler. On crisp fall afternoons, the strainer served as a cauldron for fresh pumpkin seeds. The first day of January I would mound it high with collard greens for luck. Every. Easter it served as a nest to hard-boiled eggs on their way to becoming transformed into the colors of spring. Once I actually succeeded in straining a vichyssoise through its star-patterned holes. Over the years, it has held countless mushrooms, grapes, strawberries, pecans, beans, spinach, okra pods, cherry tomatoes and potatoes, not to mention less likely items: pennies, seashells, bath toys.

You might think that when I got married eight years ago, a brand-new shiny colander would have replaced my battered old one. But because I married late in life, I'm sure my family and friends figured I already had everything I needed. And, truth be told, I did.

A gleaming stainless steel colander might be a beauty to behold, but it wouldn't stand a chance of becoming a memory well. Whenever I'd look at it, I wouldn't see the blueberries my stepson and I picked that hot June afternoon or the seashell pasta my husband raved over the night I added capers or the pile of raw spuds that became a perfect potato salad the time old friends visited. I would not see the steaming mountain of corn that still says "party" or the blackberries that will always remind me of my father.

The other day I took my rickety colander out to drain some spaghetti. It was full of bumps and dents, and the feet were so bent it would not sit level on the counter. The noodles hung inelegantly over one side. It looked just like my mother's colander--and it looked perfectly fine to me.

Grace Pearman Overman writes and cooks in Jacksonville, Fla.