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Personal Reflection/Anecdote

The Rose Bowl

By Alejandrina Mata Segreda

The bronze bowl that we use for red roses in our activities returned to my hands after the last activity of my
chapter. When we elect chapter leaders, we give the new ones the assets of the organization, including the
bowl. Now, after many years, I have it in my house, and when I went to remove the already withered flower
arrangement, I found an opaque bowl without the characteristic bronze color. Worse yet, I remembered
that the bowl had the DKG insignia on it…but now I could not find it. Examining it carefully, I realized the
bowl had been spray-painted gold and remembered the moment when we had no time to clean it properly
and decided to hide the passage of time with fresh color.
I decided to clean the bowl so that it would be “the same again.” I went to the town hardware store and
asked Don Tino, the expert, if he had an abrasive liquid to remove paint. “What do you want it for?” he
asked me, and I explained that it was to remove gold paint from a bronze bowl. “Here,” he told me. “Use
thinner and nothing else; wipe it with a cloth gently but constantly. If you use another product, you will
damage it.”
So, I went home with half a liter of thinner and started the task. The gold paint, upon contact with this
liquid, turned like a black paste (Oh my goodness, I made things worse!). But, after I rubbed the bowl for
a while, the paste disappeared, and the bronze began to emerge. My hands were burning, but I continued
because I saw that the bowl, in some way, was reborn. Then I applied bronze cleaning paste and, after 2
hours of work, I had the old bowl in my hands. Like new? No, the time and service that it has given to my
chapter for more than 4 decades had left their mark. But best of all was that one could now see the Delta
Kappa Gamma insignia!
As I cleaned the bowl, I considered it as a
metaphor. I thought about my own chapter and
others throughout DKG…about the time and
effort required to do things better, about the
importance of not hiding what we don’t like but
facing it and solving it—sometimes asking for
expert help, sometimes finding solutions among
ourselves. Without a doubt, we would enjoy
greater benefits despite the time invested in the
task.

This article continues on page 31 with a
translation to Spanish.

30 · Volume 91-2