My Grandmother’s Dishes

I was at the Good Will store a few months ago, searching among the glassware for cocktail glasses. Not the giant margarita glasses with the name of a restaurant on them, or the  martini glasses given away as a favor at a company party. I was looking for fancy crystal or fine glass in unique shapes. I found a delicate pair with hollow stems, a few with etched designs, and some with elegant, curvy shapes and colored stems. We planned to use them at a wedding shower for a fun, retro touch.

As I was moving things around and peering behind the less interesting items, a familiar blue and white pattern caught my eye. It was a little stack of dishes and a cup in the Currier and Ives pattern that I remembered from holidays at my grandparents’ house.

The dishes were sold at department stores, but could be collected piece by piece at the supermarket. I’m not sure how my grandparents came by the dishes, but I love the idea of my grandmother putting her set together week by week as she did the family marketing.

All the pieces have a Currier and Ives print on them, with names like The Old Grist Mill, The Old Farm Gate, Schoolhouse in Winter, and The Return from the Pasture. As a child at my grandparents’ table, I loved finding the different pictures and imaging life in their idyllic settings. The images of Getting Ice and Maple Sugaring captured my imagination about life in the “old days.”

Nostalgia made it impossible for me to leave the lonely, abandoned dishes behind. I came home with a vegetable bowl, two soup bowls, a dessert plate, a saucer and a coffee cup. I felt a little silly about it, but the thrift store pricing made it a small indulgence. I left them in the plastic bag, wrapped up in newspaper for a few days, like little stowaways. I did not need them, and probably wouldn’t actually use them, but I wanted to have them–a solid thing that represented memories of my grandparents and my childhood. These are not the actual dishes we used, obviously–but the forgotten feelings they brought back were so strong and sweet that I wanted to take them home.

I eventually unwrapped them, washed and dried them carefully to welcome them home, and tucked them away in the white, built-in cabinet where I store china, vases and knick-knacks. I remembered them today, and took the coffee cup out to use for my morning coffee. Gazing at the scene of a girl in an open carriage pulled by two prancing horses, I thought of my grandmother in her apron, fussing over gravy in the kitchen, my favorite pumpkin pie and coffee after a traditional Christmas feast, and our boisterous games of Pit after the table was cleared. I pictured my grandfather’s large hands holding the small handle of the cup, telling us stories about growing up on a farm in Michigan.

Such warm and vivid memories. They feel like the pictures on my grandparents’ dinnerware–scenes I wish I could step into and experience again.