I wrote about my mother recently in The Visit I Keep Postponing. This one is about what of hers lives in my house.
My mother gave me her china 25 years ago, along with her crystal, her dining room set, and Mrs. Marshall’s silver. The china is grey flowers with a thin metal line around the rim. It’s older than most of what I own, and it still looks like it walked out of a magazine this month. Somebody had taste, and taste doesn’t expire.
Her crystal gets equal footing here. My mother had at least 8 full sets, and each set came with 8 to 12 glasses. Wine. Champagne. Cordials. Port. Then the vessels that carry the drinks, the punchbowls, the cups, and the platters, all crystal, plus the deviled egg trays.
Every piece in that cabinet is an itinerary. A punchbowl assumes a guest list. Cordials assume the dinner ended and the conversation didn’t. Port assumes somebody’s staying late. Whoever bought these pieces wasn’t stocking a kitchen. She was planning an evening, with a program, and a program has a start time.
My mother ran those programs. I remember her dinner parties. She was raised poor and so was my father, and she knew what a dinner party with courses, beautiful dishes, and crystal told Black folks. It told them you made it. She added a bougie air to the situation and elevated our station, one table at a time.
She didn’t wing it. My mom had an etiquette book that covered every detail. How to set a table. What a hostess does and does not do. How to style a menu and what to cook for which occasion. She used that book religiously while I was growing up. I inherited it. The pages are yellowed and the binding is threatening to loosen, but it’s hostessing gold. It’s written for people who started with nothing and had the ambition to become somebody great. My mom passed that on to me.
Then there’s Mrs. Marshall. She was my mother’s best friend. When she passed away, she left her silverware to my mother, and my mother gave it to me in a wooden box lined in velvet. A box lined in velvet makes a promise. Nobody lines a box like that for forks they expect you to forget about. Somebody set a table with that silver for years. Now I do.
Here’s the rule in a lot of Black households, and maybe in yours. The good dishes are for company. They live behind glass or up high, and you learn early what happens if you reach. In a lot of those houses, “company” meant Easter, a pastor, or a funeral. Three occasions. The plates waited the rest of the year.
My mother didn’t live by that rule. She gave dinner parties, and the crystal came out. And when she handed me her dining room set, her crystal, her china, and Mrs. Marshall’s silver 25+ years ago, she said she wanted to see me actually use what was handed down, not leave it sitting in careful tissue paper. Because, if the good dishes are for company, then everyday life gets the everyday dishes, and you become the everyday people. Good couch, good room, good china, all of it reserved for somebody who wasn’t you. I’m not company in my own house. Neither are you.
I understand where the rule came from. In 2018, Cassie Owens wrote in the Philadelphia Inquirer about why the women in her family cherish their fine china. Her grandmother, Willie Mae Lee, said it in one line: “They didn’t expect the black people to have nice things.” So, a set of dishes, bought slowly and kept perfect, was an argument at the table. It said somebody in this house is allowed something good, and nobody is going to talk her out of it. I respect that argument completely. The saving was the defiance. The using is the sequel.
The market has weighed in too, and it isn’t kind. An appraiser in Calgary once told the CBC that a Royal Crown Derby set that retailed for more than $500 would be lucky to fetch $75. The appraiser counted 6 china stores in the city when the work started, and none now. There was a time, the appraiser said, when every girl chose her china pattern at 13. I don’t need an appraiser to tell me what a set is worth. A plate nobody eats from is storage. A plate somebody eats from is a plate.
So, I use it, just not the way it was meant. I’m not afraid of that. Showpieces are meant to be shown.
At least 20 of the platters are collectors under my plants. They sit under my most visible ones, the Monstera Thai Constellation and the super showy Queen of the Night. The huge punchbowl platter sits under my Gardyn indoor greenhouse and adds panache to the ordinary. Pitchers and vases hold plants in LECA, which is clay pebbles instead of soil, because some plants do better without dirt. People still don’t get that. 8 of the dessert glasses hold starter plants in LECA in my windows, and the multi-cut glass literally twinkles when you walk by.
The taller champagne glasses live in my jewelry closet, where I hang my showpiece African earrings on them. Sparkling glass against bright color, wood, stone, and bone sets that corner off just right. China holds my rings and jewelry. Crystal milk creamers double as short flower vases. Salt and pepper shakers are paperweights with faux ornamentals standing in the holes.
Out on the screened porch, the china is set out to hold things when people need a drink.
And yes, I eat and drink with it too.
I know what using it risks. A chip. A crack. A glass lost to a careless elbow. Something will break eventually. The thin metal line means nothing goes in the microwave, and that rule isn’t up for debate. But a chip is a receipt. It says somebody lived here and ate dinner. A perfect set in a closed cabinet says nothing at all.
I think about Mrs. Marshall when her silver is in my hand. I wonder whether she ever used it on an ordinary Wednesday. I can’t ask her now.
I see my mother in every room. That’s intentional. It keeps me close to her. She doesn’t remember me now, but I remember her in those moments. She wanted me to use what she handed down, and I believe I’m doing exactly what she wanted, with creative license, while keeping everything beautiful, sparkling clean, accessible, and full of enjoyment. I know she’d be tickled pink to see what I’ve done with her things.
I walk past the window on my way to the kitchen and the dessert glasses catch the light. I slow down. Tonight, one of them holds my water. Nobody is company in my house, and that includes me.
What are you saving the good dishes for, and who decided it wasn’t you? Tell me in the comments.
