The steam rises to my face and I instinctually turn away, gripping the handles of the pot as the pasta tumbles into the colander in the sink.  The hot water rushes through the holes and in seconds the strands of spaghetti, only moments ago twisting and twirling around in the water as single threads, are clinging to each other, clumps of cooked flour awaiting something (tomato sauce? cheese? lemon?) that will give it actual flavor.
I shake the colander two or three times and, as the last of the liquid drains out, the light coming through the kitchen window reflects off its stainless steel handles and I am carried back to my grandmother’s kitchen.  This is not the house that my childhood knew as Grannie and Pa’s.  This is the town house, the little two-bedroom just two blocks off Main Street.  It is the house where Grannie, with tears running down her cheeks, sang “Red River Valley” to me when I came to say goodbye when I left for college.  
On this particular day, which could be any of the hundreds of days I stopped by, opened the screened door without knocking, and spent a handful of minutes re-centering myself in the world I was only just beginning to understand as an adult, Grannie is sitting at the table, the S&H Green Stamps catalog is open in front of her.  Her face, never reflective of light-heartedness, is serious.
In response to my inquiry as to what she is doing, Grannie offers, “There’s a little girl at church gettin’ married.  They’re givin’ her a shower.  I’ve got some Green Stamps saved up and I thought I might could find her something in here.”  She pushes the catalog across the table.  “You know what young people like.  Maybe you could help me look.”
I eagerly accept the catalog and begin turning the pages.  “What about this colander,” I ask.  “It’s stainless steel so it will last a long time and everybody needs a colander.  Have many stamps do you have?”
“Three books.”
“Perfect!  It’s only a book and half.”
“And you think she will like it?”
“Absolutely.  It’s certainly something I would like if I was getting married.”
She nods her head, pushes the catalog aside, and asks don’t I want something to eat.
A week or so later I will make another visit to the little house and will be greeted by Grannie holding an S&H Green Stamps box.  Inside will be a colander, the one that 40 years later will sit in my sink and conjure up memories.  Grannie will look at me with the closest thing to delight that I ever saw on her face and say, “I wanted you to have one, too.”  
There is no moment in which I have ever felt more loved, no place in which I have ever felt safer than that day in Grannie’s kitchen, but the truth is that that same love, that same safety greeted me, my brother, my cousins, every single one of us every single time we stepped over the threshold.  That love, that safety is the cornerstone upon which all our lives have been built.
I blink away what might be tears, empty the spaghetti into a bowl, and consider the thought that when I assured Grannie that it would last a long time we both knew somehow that I wasn’t talking about the colander.