inheritance

This is my grandmother's desert rose china collection. It belongs to me now. My dear cowboy uncle shipped it off to me in three giant boxes last week, and now here it is. It's been a long time coming. It was always meant to come to me, her only granddaughter, when she passed away over three years ago, but it was never a high priority for anyone, least of all me. But now that Dad has also passed away, Amy is taking charge of certain things, and her Christmas present to me was helping my uncle get these things packed and shipped to me. And now that they're here, I'm glad I have them.

It's an 8-piece dinner set, with dinner plates, salad plates, dessert plates, soup bowls, coffee cups, teacups and saucers, two large bowls, a pitcher, a sugar bowl, a cream pitcher, a serving dish, and a butter dish. It's a lot of stuff! But it's really quite beautiful, and it has the added weight of having been Grandma's for all those years. I remember eating biscuits and gravy, and waffles with karo syrup off of these plates. And I remember how they were displayed in a rickety china cabinet in the dining room that shimmied and shook if you stepped on the wrong floor board.

So now I have a full set of china and a full set of silverware from Grandma, plus her diamond earrings, which Dad delivered to me in person earlier this year. And I've somehow "inherited" Mr. G's mother's crystal. I'm ready to host the perfect dinner party! If only I had a dining table and knew how to cook. But seriously, I could serve almost anything on these dishes and it would be classy, albeit in an old fashioned sort of way. Maybe once I paint my apartment, I'll have a dinner party for 8. Now who to invite . . .