A History of This Fork

This fork was made as part of a collection of silverware in a factory. Afterwards, it was shipped to a quaint kitchen supply store in a small town called Redbrooke. The store had just started their business. The two owners, Mark and Jason, a gay couple who were both in their sixties, were coming into the retail business for the first time, after a lifetime of working as doctors. The small town was getting larger, and their business was one of a handful that had just opened. Many new families were also moving to the town because although there weren't many job opportunities, Redbrooke was an ideal place to raise children. One day, a new family in town came into the store to buy some supplies. They were refugees from Syria, and had a little girl. They had left everything in Syria, and so they had to buy basic supplies for their home.

Mark and Jason were delighted to have some customers. The family of three was rushing to buy everything they needed. They bought almost one of everything in the store, and were talking swiftly in Arabic. Jason was at the counter. He asked the mother, "I've never seen you around town. Did you just move here?" She answered, "Yes. We just got here. We were living in Syria before, but we needed to leave. We have a daughter." Jason was intrigued. Virtually no one in Redbrooke was a foreigner. Mark was in the back room, and Jason called him in, "Mark! You have to meet these new people!"

The family went back to their new house, a small yellow bungalow. Both parents had gone to university in the United States, but had moved back to Syria after they finished. But, once the war started, they decided to start over. They got out a map, and picked a spot in the United States at random; spinning three times and then touching the map. That night, they ate with their new silverware for the first time--and it was the first meal they'd had where they didn't feel scared anymore.

Two years later, on the first day of school, their daughter took the fork in her lunch bag. It was a small fork--perfect for a girl who was six years old. When it was time for lunch, though, the girl felt very different. All of the other kids were the lunches served in school. She had a thermos of Tabbouleh and meat. The other kids thought she was weird. When she got home, she asked her mother, "Can I have the school lunch now, mama?"

The mother didn't know what to do after her daughter asked her the question. But, she didn't want her daughter to have one more reason to feel different from all of the other kids. So, the fork was put in a kitchen drawer. It stayed there, unnoticed, until a year later when there was an earthquake in the town of Redbrooke. The fork was jostled and shook until it fell behind the drawers--silverware limbo.

It stayed there until the new owners moved in, after the Syrian family was free to go back to Syria. The new owners were the type of people that cleaned the entire house before moving into it. They threw it out, thinking it was worthless. Somehow, it ended up at a garage sale 10 years later. How it got there is a mystery.