humble housewares

My aunt Mary Katherine Greer was 90 on July 4, 1994. Shortly after her birthday, she moved from the small apartment she'd had for nearly a decade to an assisted living facility to be with her younger sister Edith who was recently widowed.

I was recently engaged to my (now) husband John, and Aunt Mary decided to bequeath to me a number of things from her apartment. One was an extraordinary oak library table that John has used as his desk every day for nearly 17 years. She also gave us this huge (and I mean HUGE) box full of all the partially used boxes of aluminum foil, plastic wrap and wax paper she had accumulated. We actually did not have to buy any of those items for four years after we were married.

The final gift, however, was something that I've never actually used: a twenty piece set of stemware (ten large, ten small glasses), with matching serving dishes. At the time, John and I had our belongings crammed into a small two bedroom townhouse. When we moved to Kentucky, we moved into a much larger house, but it was a house with a tiny kitchen and with hardly any cupboards. There was only enough space to put the bare minimum of dishes and glassware for everyday use. No extras, no flourishes.

The stemware my Aunt Mary gave me was, as she explained, not expensive at all. Not crystal. Not hand cut. Just attractive, nicer than the every day tumblers for which we barely had room.

Our new house is smaller than our old house. BUT it has a much bigger kitchen. That was our one non-negotiable criteria in buying a new double-wide. The kitchen had to be huge, plenty of room for two adults to work at one time, for cats and a dog to wander through, and with lots of cupboards so that all the dishes, glasses, serving bowls, pots and pans would have a place so that we could use and enjoy them.

So today I finally, after almost 17 years, unpacked my Aunt Mary's stemware.