Welcome, Prudence!

China Road

When I first married in 1975 most couples registered at a department store for formal china, silver and crystal.  The simple look of a silver band around a cream background of Lenox’s Solitaire appealed to me then and still does.  Since I was preparing to be a “preacher’s wife” my mother insisted that I needed 12 place settings and by golly that’s what I got. Fancy dinners with church members and deacons were in my future.

The Solitaire lasted longer than the marriage and I carted it around with me for over 30 years.  Even when I was single I’d unpack it in every apartment and use it for dinner parties.  All twelve place settings.  And it became the china that Bill and I used for Christmas, Thanksgiving and the like.  I just loved it.

Shortly before Emily and Jeff were married I used the china for a meal when they were visiting.  In the back of my mind I’d been thinking of giving it to them, but truthfully I was having a very hard time letting it go.  But I mustered the courage to ask if they might like it and the answer was an unequivocal Yes! I packed it up and the day after their wedding they loaded it into their car and took it to DC.

Bill and I had Thanksgiving dinner with them this year and there was my china, looking ever-so-beautiful in its new home.  I sort of like the idea that it started out Baptist and converted to Judaism.

Of course I still have the Waterford crystal and Gorham sterling…

Aunt Dot

She is like a horse grazing

a hill pasture that someone makes

smaller by coming every night

to pull the fences in and in.

She has stopped running wide loops,

stopped even the tight circles.

She drops her head to feed; grass

is dust, and the creekbed’s dry.

Master, come with your light

halter.  Come and bring her in.

            In the Nursing Home by Jane Kenyon

My dear Aunt Dot is having a rough time of it.  Almost 90 and never married, she recently had to move to a nursing home in the Dallas area.  She is not just an ordinary aunt, but someone who has had a profound and lasting influence on my life.  While visiting her last week I reminded her of all that we have in common, which includes a love of reading, travel, movies and opera, devotion to the Episcopal Church, and a taste for wine.  But what I meant to say to her was Thank you, Dot, for opening my eyes to a big beautiful world and for taking me along on your journey.