Today was a day of details. We decided that we would replace many things that burned with a copy the exact same thing. It is not that we wanted to be boring or stuck in time but that these things were well loved and we want their company again.

Among those things were my All-Clad pans. We have the pans but they are now art (see photo below). Our kitchen was above the garage. In the garage sat our ancient, also beloved Subaru. When the house burned, the kitchen fell into the Subaru and underneath the Subaru we found an All-Clad sculpture. That will grace our new home as artistic memorabilia (see photo below) but won’t help much with cooking dinner. So, we are looking forward to new All-Clad pans to start this new phase of our lives.

While there are multiple things that have brought tears from laughter, one of the ones we love most was about these pans.

When we first made our way through the rubble left by the fire I dug out the charred lid to one of my pans. I raised it in the air in victory. I found a second lid. Waved that one. Then I thought, where are the pots!? I peered deeply into the rubble and discovered, I was in the Subaru. I exclaimed to my sister, “I am in the Subaru!” to which she replied, “I thought you knew that.” I looked around a bit, espying the remains of a stainless steel double kitchen sink sitting beside me and said, “I didn’t realize it, maybe it was the sink in the Subaru that threw me off.”

Today was also a cutlery day. As people donate to us as we restart our lives, we have seen some old friends return. A dish towel that had been wrapped around a casserole sent home with a friend; a coffee cup loaned, a plastic container. The mundane things of life. One of the things that made its way back to us was the remains of a flatware set donated to launch a new apartment nearly a decade ago. Another old friend. With the difficulty only a bifocal wearer could appreciate, I figured out the brand and pattern name. A little internet searching showed me that the pattern was discontinued. A little more and I found that you could buy it buy it in lots of 36 from a restaurant supply store. Hm…36 forks, 36 knives, 36 spoons…I contacted the company and they kindly agreed to sell me a dozen forks, spoons, and knives. Now we have service for 14.1285 people when I combine the old with the new.

The internet has changed our lives in many ways but one of the ways I have found useful these days is that I have internet receipts for most of our purchases since 1995. I dug out one of those receipts and found that the same nice lady who sold us our couch could help us with its replacement twin. Lovely.

Not all of our re-homing will be with things we had before but for now, it is a place to start. It is comforting to think of the kin of our knives and couches arriving to keep us company on this journey.