We’ve been overwhelmed, Bill and I, deluged with family visiting (marvelous)…added to the usual stippling of doctor’s appointments…then of course the cleaning ladies weren’t able to come so in the kitchen my pick-it-up-use-it-then-set-it-down-in-the-wrong-place created impossible chaos.
Last night my darling husband was trying to create order. Added to the frustration of jumble everywhere, the dishwasher wouldn’t work—sign kept saying “DRAIN!” That was because there was food in the damn thing (plates not scraped enough–I found pasta wedged in the dishwasher’s ball-bearing gizmo that’s supposed to whirl free). While pulling dishes from the machine and setting them down on the counter, with his limited vision, Bill set something down on a pair of stacked teacups, oh no the cups bounced onto the floor, one survived intact, the other shattered into flakes and shards.
My dear husband was so upset, so apologetic.
No, the chaotic kitchen was my bad…
It was an exquisite teacup. I loved that teacup. In the kitchen wherever it was, it would hail me—“Hallo, Sylvia my girl…I need some tea…kindly put the kettle on…” (it was an elegant cup, very mannerly) and I would.
It was my Malibu teacup.
Remnant of a long-ago life. Rich. Full. Passionate. Complicated. Bittersweet.
I’ll admit that that singular teacup I bought when I had the notion to invite friends with their daughters for tea every Thursday after school. Bea, Harriet, Jean, JoEllen, and I would sit outside on the deck under the eucalyptus by our koi pond and knit or embroider and chat…then the girls and I would serve tea or punch and cake or cookies and the girls gamely carry on with their needlework projects—which were marvelous. I was foolishly trying to impress a bit of European civility upon my young daughters. Hell, I was also cadging a peaceable hour in the garden with friends. It was lovely. Freeing.
Our Thursday teas lasted quite some time until the fire of late November 1978… As a matter of fact that dramatic day my gingercake was left on the kitchen table when we evacuated. When we returned home at midnight I was stunned to find the firemen had come into our house and the cake plate held nothing but crumbs. I was thrilled because they’d saved our house.
That the broken cup was thin white bone Céralene Reynaud china from Limoges, painted with scarlet anemones, makes it harder to deal with, but hell, if that’s the worst loss I’m going to suffer around here, I’m a lucky duck. Which I am. Very very. Very!
Then lying in bed last night thinking about that teacup, I realized it was a happy accident that it was shattered. After forty-five years, it’s time for that period to skinny back in my life.
Time to let go.
Those young daughters have their own children now…one has four sons—no tea and needlework for them (although I can imagine Stuart might be interested…). But my daughter’s daughter, yes, Frannie is a needlewoman. Splendid.
Bill broke the cup by accident…Fate tore it at a good time. Malibu’s done and gone. And instead of bone china from Limoges, I drink my tea from brilliant blue stoneware fashioned on my friend Nan Wollman’s wheel in Tucson. In perfect harmony with the rest of my life…
The shards from France will be tenderly wrapped in—I think purple—tissue paper and perhaps I’ll make a ritual of burying them in the back garden…under a rose bush…within the voices of sea lions barking off the Santa Cruz shore.
Thanks to Bill for the accident. And an opportunity to grow.
Onward! Upward! Forward!!!
