The top shelves in my cupboards are empty. Well, at least they were empty two weeks ago.
As I’ve mentioned in previous blogs, I’ve been in this season of giving everything away. I can’t reach up there anymore and it’s just me here in my home. I don’t need all this “stuff,” I’ve reasoned. And my friends are getting tired of me continually asking them, “Do you want this? How about this? This?”
Guess what. My top shelves are full again.
I couldn’t help it! You see, it seems my mother is in the very same “giving everything away” season and she has sent me away with a box each time I’ve left her house. On the top shelf of my kitchen cupboards are now several beautiful tea cups and saucers that date back to more than 100 years ago. I don’t even drink tea, but I’m certainly tempted to now! They are too pretty to just sit and collect dust! And they were a sweet addition to my kitchen!
But my favorite gift from her this Christmas season was a set of three dishes that belonged to my great great grandmother, so they are very, very, very old.
Old dishes meant little to me before my friend in Washington State had my son drive to Kalamazoo, Michigan to pick up a set, and she spent (I won’t tell you – you’ll choke) to have us ship them to her from Michigan to Washington. They matched her grandmother’s set and she simply had to have them. I get it now, Joanna! And even though I never knew my great great grandmother, I don’t really want to eat off of any other plate. Just that pretty lavender one!
Yesterday my granddaughter gave my mother a hug. Decades from now, she may not remember yesterday, or giving her a hug, or even remember her great grandmother at all. But I’m going to make sure she remembers her biscuits and jam, and I’m going to make sure when she and her brother come over to Gummy’s house, they eat those biscuits with strawberry jam on just the right lavender, 100+-year-old dishes.
I love my hand-me-down, generation-to-generation dishes! Best gift ever!
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