I spent the early part of my evening washing dishes. A lot of dishes. 11 dinner plates, 12 salad plates, 12 bread plates, 12 soup bowls, 12 monkey bowls, 11 1/2 saucers, 11 coffee cups, a creamer, a sugar bowl (with lid!), a gravy boat, a covered casserole, a large platter, small platter, and a oblong serving bowl. It was my grandmother's china service for twelve.
My mom's sister passed it along to me this afternoon in an enormous cardboard box. When we arrived home, I found the dishes wrapped in sections of the Washington Post from July to September 1972. My grandmother died in April of that year, and someone had carefully packed her china when my grandfather sold the house and moved in with my Aunt Harriett. The newspaper was yellowed and smelled of the decades it had spent in Harriett's basement. A stink bug jumped out at me from the first bowl, and so we dragged the heavy box out to the front stoop where I unwrapped the other 89 pieces.
Not surprisingly, after 47 years, they all needed a gentle scrub, and so I carefully carried the piles into the kitchen counter and filled the sink with warm, soapy water. There I dunked and wiped and rinsed and dried each piece of the Noritake porcelain stamped Made in Occupied Japan, admiring as I washed the tiny bouquets of zinnias and the red and gold band circling every one.
As I worked I couldn't help wondering who the last person was to wash these dishes. Was it my grandmother, after a dinner with friends? My grandfather, doing his part to help out at the end of evening of entertaining? Could it have been my mom, after a holiday meal? And when I was done, I knew the answer to that question, and it kind of made me sad that it was me.
My mom's sister passed it along to me this afternoon in an enormous cardboard box. When we arrived home, I found the dishes wrapped in sections of the Washington Post from July to September 1972. My grandmother died in April of that year, and someone had carefully packed her china when my grandfather sold the house and moved in with my Aunt Harriett. The newspaper was yellowed and smelled of the decades it had spent in Harriett's basement. A stink bug jumped out at me from the first bowl, and so we dragged the heavy box out to the front stoop where I unwrapped the other 89 pieces.
Not surprisingly, after 47 years, they all needed a gentle scrub, and so I carefully carried the piles into the kitchen counter and filled the sink with warm, soapy water. There I dunked and wiped and rinsed and dried each piece of the Noritake porcelain stamped Made in Occupied Japan, admiring as I washed the tiny bouquets of zinnias and the red and gold band circling every one.
As I worked I couldn't help wondering who the last person was to wash these dishes. Was it my grandmother, after a dinner with friends? My grandfather, doing his part to help out at the end of evening of entertaining? Could it have been my mom, after a holiday meal? And when I was done, I knew the answer to that question, and it kind of made me sad that it was me.
No comments:
Post a Comment