Of Fork Tines and Family

I sprinkled rose petals on the tablecloth; they circled the 1940's glass bowl my mother had called her ‘rose bowl.’ She filled it with fluid and floated roses; I use flower-shaped candles that skim the water’s surface. I rolled damask pattern napkins and slid individual ones through colorful rings. While these napkins are made from perma-press fabric, I still have, just to see and touch, the cloths and napkins given to me when I married. Heavy, beautiful items that I had to starch and carefully iron, the material has memories both tangible and emotional.

A wooden chest, lined with anti-tarnish felt, houses sterling flatware that had belonged to my husband’s grandparents. I imagined my own, as a bride, ornate as my mother’s had been, and the pleasure I had bringing the tinged brown spots back to gleaming as I polished. I still like sparkles: stars in the sky, sunlight illuminating ripples on a lake or making snow shimmer. The maple flatware box contains a bland-looking pattern that doesn’t satisfy my tactile sense, yet it has a generational past, and there were always more important expenses, as marriage years changed numbers, than buying elaborately designed utensils.

When did the crystal goblets, also once belonging to my husband’s grandparents, begin to lose the thin gold border that edged the rim? Only the unused cordial ones indicate that trim. I’d have purchased ones to finger and feel a pattern, but like the sterling, I accepted what was handed down and created my own history with them.

The China was selected with my husband. Our taste, and I focus on the time-line as I set a table. It’s not for company coming to dinner...my family will be here. Nothing in my home is either for ‘show’ or for guests to admire.  Its special space is to be occupied and used with the persons most dear: family.

When my mother taught me skills as a young girl, she had me embroider tablecloths and matching napkins in sizes from card table square to dining room length; I’ve a granddaughter that wanted a couple, and my daughter has one. Somehow, ironing the pure linen never seemed like a chore, and my cotton yarn that created a picture could remind me how I took a plain white bolt and made, with my tiny hands, a linen painting. I carted the card-table-size to my first tiny apartment and my youth and home were intertwined as I put plates on the table-covering.

Company. My family is company. Over the many decades, so far, since I donned a bridal veil, friends have been in and out of my life. Time and place saw those met as my husband completed medical school and left behind when internship began and we moved. More uprooting during the four years of medical residency had the temporary relationships based on available housing; then the mandatory armed service for two years had us forming friendships destined to dissolve once we left for civilian life. Small children called for friendships with couples who had offspring of similar ages so we could share playtime, adult time, holidays as we were still far from blood kin, and those were altered as political conversation or differences in child-rearing caused friction.

I began to hear too many times about sterling only being used for company, and 'what if your child broke a crystal glass?' Why not? I’d rather it be used and my child accidentally broke it than it sat like a display waiting for another to take it when I’m gone and decide it’s just too old or not pretty enough to be kept. Tiny cracks in values caused chasms and ‘friendship’ deteriorated.

Only as my children grew, married, reproduced, did they notice that their offspring were seated in my dining room with the ornate table carefully decorated and hearing the stories about the sterling pattern I don’t like but why and how it came into my possession, and the ‘so what’ if a grandchild accidentally breaks a glass. My values are a constant.

It’s hard now. My arthritis makes polishing fork-tines enemies that I stay determined to conquer; the maple chest no longer gets lifted but I remove and replace items from where the chest sits in a cabinet. I use a step-stool to grasp the stemware from a shelf that seems higher as I grow shorter. ‘Why are you still doing this?’ I am asked. Because ‘I can’ is not quite an answer, because ‘I want to’ says more, because, the truth is, ‘I still feel that no one is more special than my family, and dining is different from biologic eating’ in my home. When will I make this easier on myself? Hopefully, never.