Thank You For the Silverware

Check out this latest gift to me from my amazing daughter-in-law:

It's a bracelet made from a spoon. Why a spoon? Well, aside from the fact that repurposing a kitchen utensil into a piece of jewelry is very cool, a spoon is a symbolic thing to those of us with limited energy.

Ever heard of the spoon theory? It is an analogy created by Christine Miserandino in explanation of life with a chronic illness. Here's a sample, but read the rest here if you haven't before. It's amazingly accurate.

.....Then she looked at me with a face every sick person knows well, the face of pure curiosity about something no one healthy can truly understand. She asked what it felt like, not physically, but what it felt like to be me, to be sick.
     As I tried to gain my composure, I glanced around the table for help or guidance, or at least stall for time to think. I was trying to find the right words. How do I answer a question I never was able to answer for myself? How do I explain every detail of every day being effected, and give the emotions a sick person goes through with clarity. I could have given up, cracked a joke like I usually do, and changed the subject, but I remember thinking if I don’t try to explain this, how could I ever expect her to understand. If I can’t explain this to my best friend, how could I explain my world to anyone else? I had to at least try.
     At that moment, the spoon theory was born. I quickly grabbed every spoon on the table; hell I grabbed spoons off of the other tables. I looked at her in the eyes and said “Here you go, you have Lupus”. She looked at me slightly confused, as anyone would when they are being handed a bouquet of spoons. The cold metal spoons clanked in my hands, as I grouped them together and shoved them into her hands....

As my precious DIL handed me my bracelet, she said with a smile, "It's for when you need one more spoon."

She GETS it. She really does. Her present to me was much larger than a spoon bent into a bracelet; it represents her effort to sincerely understand what her old mother-in-law is experiencing. What a true gift that is.