That avocado green, melamine cooking/serving spoon, made in Denmark, from the 1970s, with the perfect shape: squarish with rounded corners, that would glide across the bottoms and nestle right along the edges of my pots and pans. I never left it sitting in a pot of cooking food, never put it in the dishwasher, always hand washed it. An heirloom in the best sense. After 40-something years, the bowl of the spoon split.

I have been in mourning over a plastic cooking spoon. WTH?

But the Internet of All The Things has eased my sadness, mostly. The perfect spoon has descendents, not identical—slightly smaller and maybe the melamine isn’t quite as hefty—but close enough to fill the empty place in my heart and utensil drawer.

Of course I ordered a green one. May it survive as long as its predecessor.