I cannot remember a time before the green bowl.

It is small, made of plastic, and entirely unremarkable to anyone who didn’t grow up with it.

Total kitsch.

I remember eating applesauce from it when I was a child. I remember seeing it in kitchen cabinets and on countertops. I remember it moving from one house to another. What I do not remember is where it came from.

There must have been a day when someone bought it.

There must have been a thing served in it.

There must have been a moment when it was new.

I have no memory of any of those things.

As far as I am concerned, the bowl has always existed.

There is a pink bowl with a different story. I associate it with my Nana’s house and the cabin she rented to summer visitors. Looking back, I sometimes laugh at the realization that she was operating a version of Airbnb decades before anyone thought to call it that. There were even postcards for the property.

The pink bowl sits safely among other keepsakes now.

The green bowl remains a bowl.

That may be what I appreciate most about it.

It has never become an heirloom. Never been displayed. Never been elevated beyond its purpose.

It still waits in a cabinet.

It still holds whatever someone places inside it.

Applesauce. Dipping sauce. Leftovers. Ingredients.

Whatever is needed.

Over the years, people have come and gone. Houses have changed. Kitchens have changed. Entire chapters of life have opened and closed.

The bowl has remained remarkably unconcerned with any of it.

Its job has always been the same.

To hold.

Perhaps that is why I have kept it.

Not because it reminds me of a particular moment.

Because it reminds me that some things accompany us so quietly we only notice them after they have traveled with us for decades.

The bowl is still here.

Still useful.

Still holding.