Porcelain ghosts

The hook, I think, was the dishes.

My mother died in 1977; my father subsequently remarried, and they're still together. One inevitable consequence of such things is the gradual separation of "her stuff" from "our stuff," and sooner or later "her stuff" is banished to the grey nothingness of memory — which means, often as not, the garage.

Which is how my brother and I wound up in the garage this afternoon sorting through boxes of stuff, including, yes, dishes. This was a set of china that had been handed down one generation, maybe two, already; presumably it would be highly prized. And actually, he prized it more highly than I; the twisting-vines motif always gave me a slight case of the creeps, and undoubtedly contributed to various incidents of "So why won't you eat your vegetables?" ("They look like they're being eaten by kudzu" was deemed Not Acceptable as a response.) I suspect that at least part of my vast ketchup consumption in those days was motivated by the urge to cover up the pattern the best I could. Which is a shame, because it's really quite lovely; however, I always preferred to see it in the cabinet, behind glass, where I didn't have to eat off it. So he wound up with the bulk of that set, and I got some of a later, crummier set which has 1970s avocado all over it, easier for me to tune out mentally. (It should be pointed out here that more often than not, we wound up eating off some plastic stuff that gloried in its plasticity; I claim no credit for this.)

Eventually, he's also going to end up with the cabinet, mostly because his lovely bride insists. I made off with a couple of side tables, a brace of mahogany Madonna (I suppose) busts, and a salad set that was in better shape than my own, which isn't too bad a haul.

Posted at 3:36 PM to General Disinterest