Sweet Rewards

Make no mistake.I still have a lot of stuff. It takes a lot of stuff to have a family, to have a decorated Christmas, to sell your own books at your talks. The book inventory is to the right, along with everything I need to set up my merch table at my talks. What a delight not to have to stack and pile and use a flashlight to find my titles! Ahhh! The little improvements, everywhere, are already making such a difference in my life. I don’t have to take inventory every single time I do a show. I can see it all right there.

Looking down toward the pantry and laundry area. I still have enough food to get me through a minor apocalypse. That’s not gonna change. I’m a food hoarder (sung to the tune of “I’m a Girl Watcher.”)

Can’t quite deal with the jumbled bookshelf. I have some folks interested in the ornithological library. Some of it’s mine, but most of it is newer books that Bill brought home from the office. If a title was remotely interesting, home it came, and I had to find a place for it. It was a bit like the hunter returning with an antelope and two spring hares, and his mate having to process it all. There’s a whole lot more lining the north wall of the living room upstairs. Like, enough books to crush me in an earthquake. And I find myself not referring much to books any more. What’s with that? The field guides, yes. The other stuff, I guess I’m looking up online. Ack. As a writer of books, I have to wince.

To have these aisles clear!! Oh my gosh. Spacious and well-lit, my basement has never been. I could iron, if I wanted to, or if I ever needed to. Until that improbable time, the ironing board makes a handy table. For now, a small spray bottle and a brief shakeout is all the iron I need, for the kind of clothes I wear. 

The things you find...Phoebe’s portrait of me, wearing a bird-decorated sweatshirt. I like the lion’s mane she’s given me. 

As I cleaned, I was looking forward to finding a couple of boxes of dishware from my previous life, the one I spent in Connecticut. There, I haunted tag sales and flea markets, looking for the pastel dinnerware I loved to mix and match at the small aluminum and Formica table in my vintage and completely unrenovated 1940’s era kitchen. I had built up a good collection of Fiestaware, my first love, by the time I discovered LuRay and Laurella. LuRay is simpler, unadorned, and was manufactured in West Virginia. Laurella was made by Universal in Cambridge, Ohio, not 45 miles from where I live right now. And there I was in the mid 80’s, collecting the stuff as if I meant to bring it all home to where it was made a decade later. 

I loved the pastel shades and its simplicity, and the way it all looked together. It was springy and happy and sweet. When I moved to Ohio, I packed it all up and put it in the basement. Time to start fresh. I bought 12 place settings of Blue Willow at Kroger, back in the days when grocery stores still sold it by the place setting if you spent enough money on food to qualify for one. And boy, did I spend enough. We used the Blue Willow for 27 years, and every once in awhile I’d yearn for my LuRay, but it was from a different life, and I wasn’t at all sure where it was now, anyway.

I worked and cleared and tossed and made room, and I never found the dishes I was hoping to run across. I surely hadn’t thrown them out; I went through every dang box in that Godforsaken mess before consigning things to stay or go. I searched my memory. I knew I’d given all my Fiestaware to my niece Karen, who uses it to this day. But I knew I hadn’t given away the LuRay and Laurella! The basement was almost done. I was to the point of washing down the shelving so I could label, organize and replace the fraction I had kept. I got out a stepladder and climbed up with a bucket of suds to wash the top shelves in the east corner. And there, over my head, were two boxes, stuffed into the ceiling rafters. I would never have seen them had I not been on a ladder washing the top shelf.  What in the Sam Hill? I eased one down. “LURAY DISHES.” Oh my God! What are these doing in the rafters?? Who puts heavy boxes of dishes in overhead rafters, and why?? 

Bill, that’s who. Let’s get these out of sight. Former lives and all that. For once I was glad he never gave anything away. Had I not cleaned the basement top to bottom, I never would have known what happened to them. Another time capsule, this one left for the next inhabitants of our home. But now here they were, heavy in my arms, and they were mine again, mine to pull down and unpack, mine to bring upstairs and use. Good grief! There were 20 place settings!

The sensual pleasure of handling each plate, bowl and gravy boat, of tenderly washing them and stacking them in their rightful place in the cupboard, was great. I carried the Blue Willow downstairs. I made a simple dinner of roast beef and baked sweet potato and served it to myself on LuRay, and a part of me that had been stored away out of sight and memory came back home.