The Good Dishes

 

A couple of days ago, we started a new tradition at the Worley home: a Christmas Tea. This sent me on a hunt for some nice tea cups. I spent some time shopping in an antique store and saw quite a few tea cups. There were also a few entire tea sets that appeared to have all the pieces intact. These were beautiful sets, hundreds of dollars and neatly stacked and displayed in locked glass cabinets. I marveled that they could’ve lasted for decades without any of the pieces getting broken or chipped. I suppose they could’ve been used a few times without any damage, but I had to wonder if they’d ever been used at all, especially by kids.

We have a couple of sets of good Christmas dishes, one being a gift from Mom and Dad a few years ago (the Christmas tree set in the picture). We get them out every year and love using them throughout the Christmas season. We try to be careful while handling them, but I told myself a few years ago not to worry too much about something getting broken.

The day after I got back from the antique store, we were all getting ready for this first annual Christmas Tea. We made lots of goodies and the girls were setting the table when there was a loud crash over by the hutch. While getting out the saucers, a platter had shifted and knocked one of the saucers onto the floor, shattering it. Everybody was quiet and the daughter holding the stack of saucers froze. My thoughts about the fancy tea sets I’d seen at the antique shop immediately came to mind. Remembering why were having this Tea in the first place – good food, making memories, celebrating the Advent season – (notice where I placed “food” in that list? ;-) quickly put things in perspective while I swept up the shards. We put it behind us and ended up having a truly special afternoon together. I predict that through the years, we will lose more pieces of the good dishes, but the memories and the precious souls who use them are the inheritance we’re passing down.