I realized this evening that I already have the perfect island-height stool to tide me over until I find the right ones to buy – and it takes me back four decades.

(I don’t want to make the kitchen stools – I want a brushed metal base to tie in with the appliances, and don’t have the time to learn metalwork and welding.)

This venerable Cosco Counter Step Stool has been in my family now for three generations (though the second generation – me – isn’t turning it over the third just yet). My Aunt Denise tells me she and her older brother, Chuck, used to fight over who got to sit in it; that must have been in the mid- to late-1950s.

And I clearly recall sitting at the end of the table in my grandmother’s kitchen 40-odd years ago in this yellow stool and begging to use the “eye spoon” – a silver-plate spoon on which the plating had rubbed off the back in the shape of…wait for it…an eye. I don’t know why I thought that spoon was so special…except that my younger brother, Ian, wanted it, too. (We also fought over the stool, which made my grandmother threaten to “get the stick.”)

After my grandparents died, most of their belongings were passed down to their three daughters and son (naturally), though I did get a fair number of my grandfather’s tools and carvings, and a bookcase I use as a china cabinet. And I got the vintage Cosco stool.

So tonight, I pulled it out of its usual nook, tossed some rubber and felt furniture sliders under the legs (the plastic protective cuffs have long since rotted away) and gave it a try. Perfect. The yellow even matches the wall – serendipity.

Now I want to know who has the eye spoon.