Brown Eyed Susan's -

My mother loves dishes. She had stacks and stacks of dishes in our dining room closet, buffet, and china cabinet. Her greatest pride was setting a beautiful table for holidays and special occasions,including everything from the linens to the china, to the serving dishes. Dad would put the leaves in the table and watch with love as his ever growing family gathered around this beautiful masterpiece of dining soiree that my mom had created.

Fast forward a several years later…it was then a bittersweet labor of love for her to oversee my sister and I’s division of her treasures when she moved from the old homestead to “town” after my dad died and she wanted Kathy and I to take her dishes that she didn’t have room for. I can’t imagine how that must feel. That painful transition, fully aware that your life has transitioned from a house full of treasures to a limited amount of necessities. I can still see her sitting there watching us, with a pained look on her face that I can’t even describe.

There were so many dishes …… We did it on the your turn, my turn rotation so that we had equal chance to get what we wanted. We both ended up with so much more than we will ever need or use. And what does one do with Mom’s Wedding China and Grandma’s everyday dishes? Especially, when I already had my own two sets of dishes. I did, of course, what most of us end up doing with family treasures…… they were stored in a box in the garage.

Fast forward a few years more and a few moves later, we end up buying our dream cabin in the pines that has become our little slice of heaven on this earth. It needed work and some TLC, but we made it our most favorite place in the world to be for us and for our family.

What a better place to use my grandma’s dishes that we had carried around in boxes in storage all those years – those Brown Eyed Susan’s that I had eaten on as a child back in the 50’s. Those pretty cream dishes with little handpainted yellow and brown flowers. I remember my grandmother putting these dishes on the table and eating dinner farm meals with my dad, my uncle, and my grandfather. So, when I unpacked these boxes full of Brown Eyed Susans, along with the moths, I unpacked coveted sweet memories of long ago.

The first time I used them at the cabin, sitting around the breakfast table with my own granddaughters, I almost wept from these memories. I swear I could feel grandma looking down over me watching her great great granddaughters eating pancakes from the same plates that she had served her sons and grandchildren on. In her most daring dreams, she would never have imagined this. But it feels just perfect that these dishes are here, among the treasures that I love the most. They are old. They are chipped. They are many. So they will last a lifetime, nestled safely in the cabinets at the cabin, and hopefully they will last my children and my grandchildren’s lifetime – many lifetimes. Wouldn’t it be something if some day my great great grandchildren will be eating pancakes off of them and feel the whisper of me in their ear, reminding them that they were loved even when they weren’t born yet. They will feel the presence of me looking down on them, filled with awe at this family that is mine.

Family treasures are a wonderful thing. Some are stored. Some are used. Some are passed on through the ages. They endure the lonely, dark confines of a box in storage, hidden away until just that right time, when they are revealed again, in their magnificence, surrounded by family and set out to shine with pride again, with the whisper of their heritage in your ear. You are loved. You are family. You are cherished through the ages. The circle of life continues. Over and over….

Simply yours,