Southern Baby Traditions: Silver Spoons and Baby Gowns

I couldn’t believe all the pretty boxes my mom showed up with for my shower.  I’ve accused her of not being sentimental all these years; yet, wrapped in tissue paper was irrefutable evidence that she stood wrongly accused.  My favorite childhood books, a pink coat that I had loved at a child, and Peter Rabbit fine baby china…It just kept getting better.  I’m pretty sure Seth was a bit jealous of my “Best Story Book Ever” by Richard Scarry.  I’ve mentioned those Sprouls and their obsession with books.  However, he couldn’t help but point out the oxymoronic nature of fine baby china.

“Did that come with a silver spoon?” he asked sarcastically.  And then I looked up at my mom with hopeful expectation.  She just smiled.

“Why yes it did!”  I quickly unwrapped several tissue mummies of Disney figurines and then I found it!

Having a Southern mother has its challenges.  Communication can be a fine art of reading between the lines and guessing what she’s really getting at and, more importantly, why.  However, it sure has its perks.  I know, a sterling silver spoon is a seemingly silly item for a baby.  Nevertheless, if you are Southern, you need not ask why a silver spoon is important.  As a traditionalist, you just know that it’s because that’s the way it’s always been done.

 

*Click on images to enlarge the photo.*

I love the detail on the handle.

And if someone – say a man you marry who reminds you constantly that all he needed growing up were the woods of Oregon – really presses you as to why you need a silver spoon, you can tell him:  It matches your silver cup.

Duh.

So what’s better than having a Southern mom?  Having a Southern grandmother, of course.  Here is the silver spoon she gave Baby Avery at the shower.

Seth likes to remind me that he grew up poor and doesn’t like the idea of privilege and inherited wealth.  All I can say to that is that my Southern Great-Grandmother, “Grandmom” Mary Lou, couldn’t shake the memory of the Great Depression and was very conservative with her expenditures.  I mean, the woman kept the bread bags to reuse them time and again.  However, she also had a set of silver.  So, yes, our child will, literally, grow up with a silver spoon in her mouth.  Don’t worry, Sprouls, we’ll send her up to Oregon for her summers of manual labor building houses with Grandpa Frank ;)  And golf (on the local top ranked links – let’s not kid ourselves here, hon!).

In my mom’s family, it is tradition to use the same gown to bring all the newborns home from the hospital.  Well, you mix it up if you have girls and boys.  Here is the dress and bonnet my sister and I wore when my parents brought me and my sister home.

 

 

 

Me, home from the hospital.

It doesn’t take a vast knowledge of Faulkner to know that Southerners love their past.  However, the fun thing about traditions is that they are a simultaneous remembrance of the past and celebration of the future.  So, here’s to the first Sproul baby via the Alarcons, Hull, and Johnston!

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