Tea Sets - Celebration Cuppa

 
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

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The Glittering Prize - Meaningful Things

I have some works of art in my house. Some are on display, others are stored for safe keeping. They are items made by my children and grandchildren, presented to me with love and received with great delight. Some are glittery and shiny, others are not, but to me these special gifts are treasured prizes which fill me with joy. Being a grandparent is a little easier than being a parent, I have found, as the grandchildren usually – not always – go home, and I don’t have full responsibility for making important decisions about them. My glittering prizes are the children themselves, though if there is something precious, it is the teaspoon fashioned from tinfoil by my son when we forgot to take one on a picnic. It has a space in my display cabinet of meaningful things.

I was watching and listening to Sir Keir Starmer’s speech on TV at the recent Labour party conference. I was horrified to see someone get to him and pour gloopy looking glitter over his head and shoulders. Luckily, it was harmless, but how on earth did he get through security? He could have had a knife, a gun, anything. For one tiny moment, as the person was removed and Sir Keir removed his jacket, I wondered if the whole thing had been staged. I soon dismissed that thought. Not a glittering prize but a worrying moment.

One of my favourite modern day poet / writers is Lemn Sissay, MBE, former Chancellor of Manchester University. In 2021 he was appointed OBE for services to literature and charity. Last year he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He is a trustee of the Foundlings Museum. Not bad going for someone who grew up in the care system, was treated unfairly by a family and repeated let down badly by social workers and social services at the time. He got justice eventually, but nothing could possibly compensate enough for his early life. Reading his memoir, ‘My Name Is Why’, broke my heart and I will salute his strength of character for evermore. He founded the charity Gold From the Stone Foundation which supports care leavers and every year provides Christmas dinners. His glittering prize is doing what he can to help others. Here is one of his quatrains,

‘How do you do it?’ said night.

‘How do you wake and shine?’

‘I keep it simple,’ said light.

‘One day at a time.’

Lemn Sissay  OBE, FRSL

  

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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