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| My Stovetop |
My mother always diplayed these
late 19th C plates in our dining room.
They had been her grandmother's
(her mother's mother)
Antique Majolica Leaf & Flower Plate
&
Etruscan Begonia Leaf Tray
Griffen, Smith & Hill
approx value: $75 each
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| You know what looks beautiful on a Majolica plate?
Fresh asparagus from Gerry's garden! |
Literary Tie - Ins
"What If the Majolica Plate"
by Jane Goldman
Majolica Poetry Event
My Great-Grandmother’s Plate
ReplyDelete—For Lillie Auxier, 1881–1965
New Year’s morning, standing
at the sink watching new snow drift,
I cosset a hope that this weather might
persist, bundling a household
of family into one more day as mine
before the world calls us out again.
It whitens the woods while I weather
a washing-up from last night’s happy ending:
the grass-stemmed goblets, dorsal spines
of underwater forks, and last, the white
china platter with lattice edges, a gift
to my great-grandmother for her wedding.
I use this plate because I want to know
how it might make me one with her, my hands
slipped into hers like a pair of gloves as I lift
and admire its fragile rim, sharing our standing
as householders, dutiful washers of porcelain.
But instead, a presence from behind me takes
my shoulders, and I feel her dread of a snow
like this for her new husband’s sake,
a man called out to cattle in any weather;
feel her brooding on a shuttered-up morning
for its cost in coal. This delicate wedding
gift might plague her for the note her mother
will be expecting soon, along with other
good news. A washing-up left for the morning
would not have been her liberty. My hands
may reach but cannot share this porcelain gift:
the newest stake of her household,
the oldest one in mine.
~Barbara Kingsolver