Cut Glass

Cut Glass





The door to the china cabinet is ajar. Over the years the maple frame has expanded and contracted as if the cabinet breathed in and out until it developed a permanent catch in the door. Now the china and cut glass tumbles rattle and clink whenever the door catches. Glass candle holders totter. Memories and invisible stories slip out to fill the dining room.

I admire the rich colors of the goblets: emerald, russet and gold. They match the intricate patterns on the dessert plates leaning against the back of the cupboard.  The plates show a center pattern of lily of the valley sprigs against a patina of cream. Chevrons of twenty-two karat gold ring the border. Fifty years ago these plates graced the luncheon tables of the Palmer House hotel in Chicago, where starch white linen tablecloths snapped in the hands of the hands of wide black laundresses. Where immaculate coiffed ladies appeared for high tea in sapphire wool coats trimmed in mink. I imagine the elegant plates muttering amongst themselves in humiliation of ending up in a garage sale before I rescued them.

And so I began my love affair with beautiful objects. A friend told me that because I was born a Leo, an August baby. I would need to be surrounded by beautiful things in order to be content. I needed treasures as part of by birthright of royalty, a queen of the jungle. My collection of china, silver tea service, crystal and cut glass, grew over the decades and now it speaks to me in reflections of past dinner parties. I hear the too loud laughter from the March gathering of sisters and cousins where the ceramic platter held two plump hens stuffed with bread and herbs and served up on sliced oranges. Myra’s signature blueberry cheesecake glowed on my late mother’s cut Depression glass cake plate—my only family heirloom. I received it in a lottery my mother held for me and my five sisters (the only boy was overlooked-he would not care for her things anyway) before my mother and father gave up their small house to squeeze into a yet smaller senior subsidized apartment. If I looked closely into the deep cuts in the cake plate I thought I could see the shape of my mother’s face as she bent over the plate holiday after holiday, placing her lopsided chocolate box cake with her peanut butter icing so carefully onto it, while we children waited by the stack of white cardboard plates and mismatched forks for the used birthday candles to be lit.

         On the table I preferred colorful linens to pristine white for drinks were spilled along with secrets. Like the night when Aunt Peggy dropped the name of her latest crush and the word Sharon hung over the dinner table like a small mushroom cloud. “Would anyone like some more apple taffy salad?” was all I could think of to say.

         I close my eyes and a transparent glass cream pitcher—you can find these at any antique store—fills with sweet yellowish Milnot. A woman with a gold rimmed tooth, a slight stoop to her shoulders and black sturdy shoes appears wearing a flour sack apron. She smells of blackberry preserves and snuff.

         “Hello, grandmother,” I whisper.

         She pulls a man’s handkerchief from her ric rac bordered pocket and wipes her right eye. Then she disappears out the back door of my mind, to gather more brown eggs.