Aunt Tillie’s Silver Tea Set
“Take it,” Aunt Tillie insisted.
We sat side by side, our bare legs
Sticking to her plastic-wrapped couch
In that hot apartment on 34th Street.
“An heirloom,” Aunt Tillie said,
Showing the ornate tray in our laps.
“To pass down to your children.”
Who had absolutely no interest
Forty years later, to waste even
A minute with a polishing cloth.
So Aunt Tillie’s silver tea set
Goes to Goodwill
Along with my vintage china.
Aunt Tillie had been so sure
Generations would treasure
The chance to entertain in elegance.
But she spent her life, like I did,
Accumulating things that would one day
Be dumped for a tax donation.
Unloading my car, I see I am not alone.
So many others my age, discarding
Knickknacks we once though we needed
But now wish to unstick from our skin
Like the plastic on Aunt Tillie’s couch.
Jacqueline Jules
Jacqueline Jules is a poet and writer of children’s books. She lives in Long Island, USA. When I read this poem and realised that was exactly ‘it’, I felt relieved that I’m not alone and I need not feel guilty for doing a similar thing.
We had to pack things away to make space for our damp course to be replaced. This task also became a down-sizing project ready for that move we keep talking about. Emptying a display unit and a cupboard, I made the decision that the tea sets had to go. By tea sets, I mean family heirlooms and not items we had acquired for ourselves. A china tea set, painted gold, made up of cups, saucers, small plates and a sandwich or cake plate, with a milk jug and sugar basin, was a gift from the family to my maternal grandparents for their golden wedding anniversary in 1972. I remember the party and buffet taking place in their pub and I always thought I remembered my mother being there, but she had passed three years earlier. She must have been there in spirit. We had toasted the ‘bride and groom’ by drinking tea from the gold cups, some of us, anyway, and congratulating them on reaching fifty golden years of marriage. Or fifty golden years of constant bickering, but that’s another story.
The other tea set, also china, ivory coloured with tiny gold detail, belonged to my maternal great-grandmother. I don’t think it marked an occasion, it was hers and the two sets were kept together after they were passed down to me and my sister. I don’t know who had them first, they’ve been backwards and forwards, more recently ending up with me and nicely displayed in a glass cabinet. Until the great clearance.
My sister was quite sure she didn’t want them back and I could do what was best for me. Looking on Ebay and other online sites, I learnt that we weren’t dealing with treasure here. I would have to donate them to a charity shop where they would sit with other rejected heirloom tea sets for years. It was a very sad thought, but with the date for the start of the damp proofing looming up, there wasn’t much time for sentiment and the tea sets were bubble-wrapped and packed into boxes.
During this time, I had a welcome visit from a close friend of many years. We were overdue a catch up and a good gossip, which we did before moving into recent things like the state of our poorly house, the cost of the remedial work and being ruthless in getting rid of things. Someone in her family was about to have the share of a charity shop for a week, so she gladly took a box of DVDs and some clothes. When the tea sets were mentioned, it was music to my ears to learn that her sister did afternoon teas and might be able to use them, she would ask.
A few weeks later, on the other side of one of our trips away, I was happy to wash and re-pack the heirloom tea sets and send them to their new home where they might be used. Thank you so much, you know who you are.
Thanks for reading, Pam x
Jacqueline Jules is a poet and writer of children’s books. She lives in Long Island, USA. When I read this poem and realised that was exactly ‘it’, I felt relieved that I’m not alone and I need not feel guilty for doing a similar thing.
We had to pack things away to make space for our damp course to be replaced. This task also became a down-sizing project ready for that move we keep talking about. Emptying a display unit and a cupboard, I made the decision that the tea sets had to go. By tea sets, I mean family heirlooms and not items we had acquired for ourselves. A china tea set, painted gold, made up of cups, saucers, small plates and a sandwich or cake plate, with a milk jug and sugar basin, was a gift from the family to my maternal grandparents for their golden wedding anniversary in 1972. I remember the party and buffet taking place in their pub and I always thought I remembered my mother being there, but she had passed three years earlier. She must have been there in spirit. We had toasted the ‘bride and groom’ by drinking tea from the gold cups, some of us, anyway, and congratulating them on reaching fifty golden years of marriage. Or fifty golden years of constant bickering, but that’s another story.
The other tea set, also china, ivory coloured with tiny gold detail, belonged to my maternal great-grandmother. I don’t think it marked an occasion, it was hers and the two sets were kept together after they were passed down to me and my sister. I don’t know who had them first, they’ve been backwards and forwards, more recently ending up with me and nicely displayed in a glass cabinet. Until the great clearance.
My sister was quite sure she didn’t want them back and I could do what was best for me. Looking on Ebay and other online sites, I learnt that we weren’t dealing with treasure here. I would have to donate them to a charity shop where they would sit with other rejected heirloom tea sets for years. It was a very sad thought, but with the date for the start of the damp proofing looming up, there wasn’t much time for sentiment and the tea sets were bubble-wrapped and packed into boxes.
During this time, I had a welcome visit from a close friend of many years. We were overdue a catch up and a good gossip, which we did before moving into recent things like the state of our poorly house, the cost of the remedial work and being ruthless in getting rid of things. Someone in her family was about to have the share of a charity shop for a week, so she gladly took a box of DVDs and some clothes. When the tea sets were mentioned, it was music to my ears to learn that her sister did afternoon teas and might be able to use them, she would ask.
A few weeks later, on the other side of one of our trips away, I was happy to wash and re-pack the heirloom tea sets and send them to their new home where they might be used. Thank you so much, you know who you are.
Thanks for reading, Pam x
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