Another Treasure Brought Home

Great-Great Aunt Alma's dishes

These dishes were given by Mom's Great-Aunt Alma to my grandmother, who passed them along to Mom, who proudly displayed them in her kitchen or dining room, always.


After Mom's passing and some time had gone by, Dad packed up a few of Mom's things for her daughters. There were three sets of old dishes; one for each of us. Karen received a set that had belonged to our Great-Great Aunt Alma, who was a nurse and travelled enough to pick up such luxuries from various places in Europe. She was single till middle-age and had no children, which might explain how she could afford nice things while her sister, my great-grandmother, on the farm here in Saskatchewan, could not.


 Dad brought me a set that belonged to his mother and was on the head table at his and Mom's wedding. They are a Princess Anne set, cream-coloured with gold edging, including every possible piece: platters, jugs, soup tureen with lid, and so on. They're displayed on the top shelves of two adjacent, doorless kitchen cabinets.


 But I think it was this set, the mottoware, that we all loved the best. I know I did. Yet we all had the impression that Joan would like to have it, and that was fine with us. Dad held onto it for her. If Karen and I wept, it was in private. (Heh.) Fortunately for me, Joan has decided she has no place to display these dishes, and so I brought them back with me from Kelowna. Karen also has no place to put them at the moment, so I did not have to armwrestle her. They're mine! For now. For we all know that one day they must go to someone else in the family, to be loved and cared for and shown off. In the meantime, where to put them?

On top of the fridge

And on top of Grandma Johnson's china cabinet

I think of Mom every time I look at them. And I love to think of Mom.