I believe the dishes have been talking among themselves.
They have had a great deal to say, after all. We have been here working like women with a mission, finding new homes for things, making china cabinets where ordinary closets used to be, carrying boxes and totes up and down, and generally reuniting dish "families" that have been separated for years by my poor housekeeping, lack of cabinet space, and the occasional upheaval of life.
I believe the talking began the first night.
“Where have you been?”
“Downstairs. She put me there 8 years ago when she had the floors done.”
“Downstairs? Was it cold?”
“In the winter, yes. In the summer, there was no air conditioning down there. I just do not care to discuss it. It was too painful”
“Did everybody get out?”
“I am not entirely sure. I still think some of us are missing.”
“Oh, I heard they were at 'the other house.'”
“They’re not coming then?”
“No I don’t think they’re coming now.”
“Simply horrible.”
“Well, we shall not give up on them yet. She may find them somewhere tucked in away from the rest of us. Or you know--- their doppelgängers are on eBay. You understand how she is.”….
….. they do know how I am. I love dishes in a way that is probably not entirely normal, but then I come by it honestly. Dishes, to me, are never only dishes. They are tables and laughter and what was served and who sat where and which grandmother used which cup. They are also memories and hope. They are the thought that there may yet be more lunches, more Christmas dinners, more people gathered around a table set with something pretty.
The Friendly Village people, of course, had not gone far. A Friendly Village dish does not pick up and move around any. They have lived for years in the north cabinet of my kitchen, running, apparently, a small bed-and-breakfast for assorted guests from other dish families who had taken refuge there. We weeded out the strangers and found a few wandering Friendly Villagers who had tucked themselves into outside locations, and now the whole village seems to be together again.
Friendly Village was an accumulation of sets by my grandmother and mother, with some strays added by me along the way. My family must have loved it very much. It is created by Johnson Brothers, and it is all barns and trees, reds and greens, the sort of winter scenes that make people think of Thanksgiving and Christmas. But a Friendly Village is hospitable in any month. You can come to it whenever you want.
My Franciscan Desert Rose is still not entirely reunited, but that is not from lack of trying. This family is simply too large for the base of the Ethan Allen Hutch where I’ve always kept them. My grandmother had Desert Rose, and I had a set of my own once. I am afraid mine went down with the ship when my other home was vandalized.
My Aunt Thelma in Quincy had it, too. Franciscan Desert Rose was everywhere once, and for good reason. It is perfect in Spring and Summer, but it can also make a surprisingly beautiful Christmas table if a person has the imagination and desire to use pink and greens instead of marching straight to the red plaid. I can hear my Desert Rose saying just that to herself. “We have always looked lovely at Christmas, Darling. Some people are simply limited.”
My mother’s wedding China has never been mixed in with anybody else. It lives alone in the base of a beautiful bedroom cabinet, and as far as I can tell, it has no idea that there are other dishes in the house. It was made by Syracuse China, and it is a light warm cream color with muted pastel flowers around the edges. My mother loved it and used it on very special occasions and for company. She always paired it with her blue Fostoria crystal, which I have shamelessly pirated out and enjoy often. I love it so much. My own first wedding China, Blythe by Noritake, was the daughter-set in a way, snowy white where mother's was cream, brighter pastel flowers where hers were soft. Blythe was packed in a box at my other home. It did not survive that life, but mother’s China is here, serene and elegant and entirely unaware of the traffic around it.
I had to pull a referee job over Katie Alice. Katie Alice is a newer set, one I fell in love with so fast that I believe I had it found and ordered within 20 minutes of first sight. It was exactly something my grandmother would have loved. Half the pieces are red with white dots and white interiors, and half the set are white with wonderful meadow flowers around the edges. They are not two sets. They are sisters, and they belong together. I had to step in before one of the sisters was sent toward the Christmas stack and one was sent toward the Summer stack. I could not stand idly by while sisters were being separated.
And then there is Agatha, by the Pioneer Woman, a relatively new girl in my household, given to me by a dear friend. She is blue and white transfer with a spritely little flower pattern, and she has the good manners to go with almost any season and the good sense to blend beautifully with my Flow Blue china without pretending to be Flow Blue. You see, most Flow Blue china won’t let anyone else pretend to be Flow Blue.
My father bought my Flow Blue one piece at a time through the years at flea markets and auctions. Many came from a strange, old place in Macon that had once been a sanatorium and later had little booths of dishes set up in the old rooms. Some of the metal fixtures that had once held chains were still in the ceilings, which made it a slightly eerie place for a young girl to go shopping. But there were dishes, so naturally I went.
Pfaltzgraph Folk Art is here too. It is cheerful and sturdy, a pattern I loved because my cousin from Indiana chose it for her wedding China.
And then there is strawberry faire.This China is exquisite, only four settings and two square plates I added later, but especially dear because it was the last gift my mother bought me before her stroke. Strawberry Faire does not need to say much; the others just make room for her. She’s a veteran of spending some time in the curved- glass front China cabinet, so she assuredly puts on airs.
Not every dish family is represented here. Some were lost because of crime. Some were left behind too long. Some I gave away. I have regrets over a few of those departures, but not over my mother‘s old wheat dishes. She used them in the fall and the late summer. I do not know the proper pattern name. To us they were simply the wheat dishes, with a broad gold and yellow band and one solitary shaft of wheat. After my father died and I moved in with mother, we used to drive out to buy produce and baked goods from the Amish. Our special favorite was one Amish woman named Laura. Neither mother nor I could walk well enough to go in and shop, so Laura would come running out to the car with her children, tell us what she had, go back in and gather what we wanted, bring it out, tell us what we owed, and put it in the car for us. Later my son would carry it inside. After my mother died, I knew I would not be going out there very often anymore, and I wanted to thank Laura. So I took her the large set of my mother‘s sweet wheat dishes.
“I hope you can have these,”I told her.
“I can have these for sure,” she said. “They will be on my table every Sunday, and I will never forget your mother.” Those were the only dishes I’ve ever given away that I never once wished back.
So yes, the dishes have been talking, some are relieved to be home, some are still asking after missing cousins, some are, I suspect, a little proud of themselves, and some have gone on to other tables, carrying with them the essence of people I love so well.
Which is what dishes do when they have been truly used and loved.
They hold food for a little while. They hold memory much longer.
A wonderful read… yes, you do come by the love of dishes on both sides of your family!❤️
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