Why I’m Breaking Mom’s Best China

It’s About Damned Time. Lessons on “It’s Too Good to Use Every Day”

Stashed above the short, squat Frigidaire that took up the place of honor in our very small kitchen in the 1960s was a collection of carefully-wrapped Franciscan Ivy ware. I think it was a wedding gift. No matter. I knew of its existence, but may have only seen the set in use twice in all the years I spent at Hubbel Ranch, my childhood home.

We lived on 25 acres of Florida farmland, forest and and a homestead facing Deer Lake in the northwest part of Winter Haven. My mother, born into money but married to a by-then-barely-making it chicken farmer, kept her lovely china protected from grubby, clumsy childish hands.

I suspect the Franciscan Ivy was a callback to what might have been for her, had she married into money. Real dinners with real guests with real taste in dinnerware would have appreciated it. That didn’t happen at our house.

More fairly, it’s likely that those kinds of events did indeed happen, after the kids were put to bed and house guests were guaranteed a more genteel experience, even out in BFE (Bum F*ck Egypt).

That dinnerware came into my hands, natch, eventually. Mom moved to a community where such things were not only impractical but there was no room for them in a 500-square foot apartment.

The Ivy landed with me, still packed with great love and care. Memories of a mother who had dreamed of a different life, with daily china and good china and Very Good China.

For Very Good Guests.

We used paper plates a lot while I grew up. That was the daily china.

Like Mom, I also kept the Ivy dutifully hidden away. Like a pretty dress for Someday, that perfect piece of jewelry for Someday, that gorgeous Whatever for Whenever.

Whenever has a habit of not showing up, particularly if we’re waiting for the Universe to deliver X, when X doesn’t fit this particular life arc.

I didn’t marry (for very long, that’s for sure) and I never used the dinnerware.

I surely never had a hope chest, albeit I hoped like hell for a chest. When that didn’t show up either, I bought one. Despite all the sales pitches to the contrary, that didn’t work either, but that’s another article.

But I did move a lot.

All things truly delicate, no matter how perfectly packed away, are going to suffer breakage. Over time, each time I would unpack the Ivy to stack carefully into its own wood cabinet, I watched another piece have to be thrown out, too badly broken to be fixed.

Like life.

Whenever becomes never, if we’re not careful.

The Franciscan Ivy waited to be used, and was slowly and surely being broken, bit by bit, with barely a chicken breast being carved on their surfaces, barely a single dollop of ice cream ever scooped up, encircled by its pretty leaves.

Like life. Like mislaid hopes.

Last night, after fourteen years in my last house and close to fifty in Denver, untold numbers of moves, finally able to start unpacking, I opened one of the boxes marked “fragile, dishes” in my new-to-me gourmet kitchen.

Two ovens, and I don’t cook, but it’ll impress my friends. Okay, okay, so all I have here is my real estate agent, but she’ll come look and be duly impressed.

Three lovely Ivy dinner plates, smashed to bits. They weren’t alone. So were a few pieces that I had bought For Special Use. Those hadn’t been used either. I had inherited my mother’s compulsion to protect the good stuff for Later. Someday.

Well, look. At 67, first, there will be no wedding coming up. I don’t entertain, and these days, frankly, nobody else is either unless they’re entertaining suicide by virus (please see this by Medium buddy Nicole Chardenet):

So honestly. Precisely who the F*ck am I saving my Mother’s Best China for?

Especially since we’re down to just a few plates, no bowls, a few salad dishes and not much else?

If you’re my age, you have stuff that you give deep emotional value to, but your kids sure don’t. That expensive ceramic rooster that held pride of place in your big kitchen? You really think your Millennial kids are dying to get their hands on that?

Women my age, and it’s mostly women, have all this stuff full of memories and value that only we (or OUR mothers) have ascribed to our stuff. Most younger folks, barring collectors, hoarders and kids-just-like-their-mothers, look. Nobody wants our shit. That would include those boxes of godawful childish refrigerator art she simply could not part with.

Not only that, it takes too much work to maintain.

That “shit” might well become expensive antiques (sort of like I am these days) but for now, it’s just, well, shit.

The older we get, we can become as brittle as that fine china, so very easy to crack and chip and break from lack of self-love.

Not much of that Franciscan Ivy left. About all I could do is offer those pieces on ebay to complete other collections, likely owned by aging women like me whose moms got them for a wedding.

Pennies on the dollar for what actually has a great deal of intimate value for me, for this china is a direct connection to my Mom. Her dreams.

I’m going to honor my mother by using the shit out of what’s left.

Same thing I’m doing with my life and my body.

I plan to use the holy crap out of that lovely china, what is left of what my mother cherished, and give it the chipping, cracking and breaking that regular love will deliver. Damn this nonsense of holding on to good stuff for Someday, when Today is here, to be celebrated, and by god, deserves my best stuff.

I can’t speak for anyone else but I really am done with standing in my kitchen, eating tepid corn outta the can, and calling that a meal. Medium buddy Ann Litts called me on that shit the other day and she was right. That’s why she’s my buddy.

I can think of a lot of folks who could rightly and justifiably point out that all things taste better- warmed up, for one thing, why not- if put into something lovely. Now I can’t go as far as to put them on a table ( still in pieces downstairs) or on my kitchen island (currently my desk), but I could AT LEAST put said warm corn onto a pretty plate.

In the exquisite film Out of Africa, as things began to wind down for Karen Blixen’s stay in Kenya, Denys Finch-Hatton visits her at her empty home as she is selling the last of her things before she leaves for Denmark, never to return.

Blixen’s house is today a museum, and a place where you can feed giraffes, and yes, I’ve done it. And yes, it’s worth it.

Finch-Hatton had teased her at their first meeting about bringing fine china to such a wild place. At the end, he said, “I was beginning to like your Limoges.”

The Limoges, as a statement of culture and class for Blixen, was a way to bring a sense of order to such a remote and wild place. It ultimately meant little. Nowhere near as important as Finch-Hatton, who was a cad, and who died young in a plane crash soon afterwards. The china, all those trappings, are ultimately nothing but smoke, but for what memories they may represent.

Last year sometime, Medium buddy Terri Ducay shared with me that she too had stocked her cabinets and her house for a family that never happened. Glasses and cookware ( I don’t cook, I open bags of salad), lovely plates.

We both laughed, not without some sadness, at the idea. We prepared for what was not to be for either of us.

But Mom’s Franciscan Ivy is a little different. What is left of that china is going to allow me to touch Mom every time I use it. I didn’t buy that for a dream. That was my mother’s, likely something she hoped I might have used for Special Occasions in my own family.

If you are anything like me, you have saved That Special Dress, That Special Perfume, That Special Necklace or Ring for the Day that didn’t come.

Today is that day, if I may.

I will pour the broken pieces of my mother’s Franciscan Ivy, with all the love I can muster, into the trash. Today I stacked- with great care- what is left in my cupboards, along with the rest of what I set aside for Someday, to be used Every Day.

I also am wearing my Best Perfume. As I unpack, I am also coming up with excuses to put on Those Gorgeous Necklaces.

Because Today is That Day. At 67 and counting, those days are frankly numbered. Is there really any good reason to NOT load all my turquoise onto my neck, put on my best Antonio Berardi blouse and pull a Georgia O’Keefe while I write, and nibble on grapes on my mother’s Franciscan Ivy?

Stride around my home, full of light and life and surrounded by green and living things, noisily jangling at the wrists and my expensive silk skirts caressing my (increasingly knobby) knees? Smelling like heaven and feeling like a million bucks?

Can you give me ONE good reason not to?

Didn’t think so.

After my mother moved into that facility, she only wore cheap polyester junky clothing. Not. On. Your. Life. She had superb fashion sense, and she stopped caring for herself after 65.

Got china? Use it.Got good jewelry? Wear it. Got gorgeous clothing? Put it on. For Crying Out Loud. Covid or no Covid, this isn’t about impressing others. This is about loving us.

The china will break, the jewelry may lose a pearl, your gorgeous jacket may get a run.

But you are living in them. That’s what life is for. To be lived in.

Time for dinner, on what’s left of my mother’s beloved Franciscan Ivy.