Thursday, January 06, 2005
Special Occasion
Nana might not appreciate it, but we broke out the good stuff – and I’m loving it.
My grandparents indisputably had style, but honestly, it was not my style. Though they lived in small-town Ohio, they traveled the world, dressed fashionably, attended concerts and the theater, and kept a very well-appointed home. They had so many lovely things that it became a family joke that they incessantly quibbled over who would “get” what when they were gone. They went so far as to have us label their belongings for our respective inheritances. But all their decanters and silver ashtrays and special things obviously belonged with them in Lima. I didn’t want any of it to be anywhere else – especially not my own home. These were objects that represented a staid conventionality that just didn’t jive with my mismatched improvisational life. They were Lima things, and that’s where god wanted them to be.
When Nana and Grumpy broke down their household and moved to the progressive-care facility where they both eventually passed away, boxes and crates of their china and stemware and chotchkes* and accoutrements were going to be jettisoned if somebody in the family did not adopt them and take them in. Some of that stuff was nice, too, so even though I couldn’t see what I’d do with it, I put in my claim and got my share.
The goods arrived in good condition and I was happy to find some wineglasses and coasters we could really use, along with loads of other stuff – hand-embroidered but poorly maintained linens, scads of cocktail napkins, and fancy place settings. A few items went right into circulation; most of it went into a low drawer or onto a high shelf where it sat quietly for years.
But we have been running out of plates and glasses lately, so Kel went and fished out some classic Ohio brunchwear: voluminous crystal water goblets with incised stars, and hexagonal green-rimmed plates with decals of spring flowers in the center from good old Czecko-slovakia. When I saw these relics in among our cozy old tablewear in the cupboard, it looked terribly foreign and out-of-place – museum pieces in the thriftshop of my life. I like my low-key downstyle setup and the old-new pieces just didn’t feel like they fit.
But yesterday morning I needed a midsized plate for my toast-n-cottage cheese, and before I realized it I’d pulled down a fancypants hexagonal plate and suddenly my boring breakfast had become a gourmet petite-dejeuner. I was not willing to be outclassed by my own food, so I sat up straighter, got a little tidier (a challenge with that meal; the cottage cheese falls off the toast with every bite), and found myself just feeling better about the morning. So much better, that I fetched down out a star-spangled goblet and poured myself a few ounces of blueberry-pomegranate juice and filled the rest with seltzer.
So there I sat in my spacious but ordinary kitchen, where my regular boring breakfast had been transformed into something sophisticated and elegant. Sure, I still wound up pouring plenty of cottage cheese down my chin and onto my fleece pullover, but on the table I had European flowers to brighten the morning and when I took a sip of effervescent juice it was from an effervescent goblet that sparkled in the gloomy early light of the day. The food tasted better and was more fun to eat.
I know that my grandparents did not keep these plates or goblets for “everyday” use, and they were sticklers for this kind of propriety – one did not use the wrong plate at the wrong time in their house. That’s probably why I wasn’t comfortable using these items indiscriminately at first. But now that the ice has been broken, I see that these plates and glasses had a much broader applicability than I’d originally understood. There is no reason why every morning should not be an occasion for festive fast-breaking. In fact, on reflection, there are innumerable reasons to embrace just such an innovation in my life. So, sorry, Nana and Grandpa – the plates are no longer for special occasions. Or, alternately, “special occasions” has been redefined to include every morning I wake up and want breakfast.
*Is there a correct spelling for this word? As I draft this opus-ette, spellcheck tells me I’ve got it wrong and suggests the following list of alternatives: crotches, chocks, churches, hotcakes, hutches. I’m thinking, there is a story waiting to be written about this series of words, but it’s not the story I’m writing now.
