July 10, 2018 – The Tray

         It is old and worn, but it is dear to me.  When I pick it up to wipe it clean I always flip it over to see the label now worn and faded but still legible. “THIS BELONGS TO TESS” in large capital letters in my Mom’s handwriting applied at a jaunty angle many years ago.  No one can miss that label and that is the way I want it kept.  Scraping off that label would be like scraping my mom’s memory off my soul and that is a “non-starter” as they say in business circles.

I don’t care that one wood corner is split underneath, or that the mahogany has lost its patina to years of scratches, some deep, some not. The brass trim is tarnished beyond recovery and there is even a bit of brass cleaner that never came out of the filigree on one corner when Mom last tried to brighten it up.

         Last Fall I helped to clean out my Mom’s house of her and Dad’s possessions in anticipation of selling their home. I’ve written about this before, but anyone who has had this responsibility knows how heart wrenching it is.  There are often surprises and often disappointments too.

         Who can sleep during that process?  It is emotionally numbing and after going out to dinner at a local restaurant with a friend I paced around the house wondering what I would tackle next.  I wasn’t up to the closets just yet, I wasn’t up to the china cabinet as I opened the doors and closed them again. I knew the kitchen would be a difficult – sorting out the good stuff from the plastic containers, from the florist vases, from the saved and washed aluminum pie pans. 

         I made myself a cup of cocoa and poured it into a cup and saucer from my Mom’s “best china” which I retrieved from her china cabinet.  The whole world needs to smile as the family did when we called it the “best china”. The Robins’ egg blue with the cornflower design were collected, I believe, out of boxes of laundry detergent or sent away for with cereal box tops. A few days later, Mom’s only granddaughter packed them up lovingly and when she finally settles down into her own place, they will be used again.

I drank cocoa and coffee out of that cup and saucer for several days just to celebrate that my Mom loved those dishes and the rest of her possessions.   I smile now, it was sort of silly of me,  but I felt like she was with me as I was drinking out of that cup and saucer and it made sitting on the kitchen floor and pulling out the contents of each lower cabinet easier.

I started to the far left where I had to press my back up against the radiator as I sat on vinyl the floor.  I’d forgotten the cabinets were deep and had to fetch my trusty flashlight in order to see what I was doing.   The first few cabinets were easy until I got under the sink where the cleaning products were.  I sorted those and noticed that I am my mother’s daughter when it comes to brands.  Funny that – I live half a country away from Mom and we both use the same products.

The next cabinet, the skinny cabinet had a stout cardboard box cut to keep liquor bottles nested and neat at the very front, and behind were the upright cookie sheets and cupcake pans and the tray.  Yes, that is where it was always kept; it wasn’t in too bad of shape from being shoved in and out of that cabinet during many years of use.

I pulled it out, looked it over, and teared up as soon as I saw the label.  It had been decades since I’d mentioned to Mom I liked that tray and asked her to leave it to me.  It was the time my husband and I drove in from New Jersey one spring and I used the tray to carry the plates and cutlery, salt and pepper and the condiments out to the picnic table.  We’d been married only a few years at the time.  Back then, the tray was worn, but the brass was shiny and the finish still in good shape. Mom must have applied the label back then, the handwriting was crisp.

When I was a kid, with a cold or flu, Mom would bring me homemade eggnog dusted with nutmeg, or a bowl of clam chowder [from a can] with scratchy toast cut into strips on a folded dishtowel on that tray.  It made me feel like a queen served in bed.

I don’t remember now what she said when I asked her where she had gotten it.  I wish I had made a mental note of that, but alas, I didn’t.  I was more intent on walking over the lumpy lawn to the picnic table without spilling out the ketchup or cutlery.

Looking at it this morning, I remember at Christmas time when I was a child that tray would have an oval mirror in the bottom dusted around the edges with Ivory flakes that looked like snow displaying vintage metal skaters. At Easter, Mom would often group her egg collection on it.  Later, during the summer, she would pile her seashells on it.  Seasonally decorated it was often on her coffee table.

Me, I’ve set it over a dreadful scratch on the bureau top in the guest room to collect odds and ends that eventually I put away. When my brother visited, he noticed it immediately.  I wonder if he picked it up and looked at the worn label on the bottom.  I hope so.