My Little Black Skillet
Acrylic on canvas
10” x 12”
Some people have their comfort food. Some have their comfort pillow. While others have their comfort blanket. I have my “comfort skillet”.
There’s nothing really special about it except that I has a dent in the middle. Every time that I use it to heat my food, I’d have to hold it firmly on the stove unless I’d want my meal all over the floor.
It’s black – soot black, with a short handle that has lost its screw so many times it’s now quite wobbly to hold. Once I was sitting on the floor on a red carpet with my black skillet in hand half-filled with turmeric-flavored rice, I spilt all the contents on the floor. It wasn’t because I was clumsy. It was simply because the handle just decided to let loose off the base. I had a choice of eating my lunch from the floor, or simply going out for a burger. I opted for McDonald’s.
In 7 years of living on my own, I have transferred to three apartments, endured bad relationships as well as great ones, changed careers several times until I finally settled on one, and my little black skillet had been the silent witness to all my gustatory soliloquies.
Quiet. Unassuming. Tiny.
But to my mother, whenever she sees me eating from it she’d say, “Anak, gawin na nating paso yang kawali mo. May mga plato ka naman ah.” (Son, let’s just use that as a plant pot. You already have plates.)
Once I told her, “You can’t abandon something that gives you comfort that easily. It stays and everytime you use it, it gives you a feeling that things are just fine.”
