Beech Tree News Network

I fished a china tea cup from a recycle bin that was full to overflowing this weekend.  I opened the door for the clear glass bottles and there, right on top of everything, sat a perfect bone china tea cup—Wedgewood bone china, made in England in 1989, the bottom of the cup read.  I took it home, cleaned it up, and served myself a nice cup of hot tea that evening.  I wondered whose cup it had been, and why the people the cup had been passed down to or the people who had discovered it at the bottom of a box they purchased at an estate sale had simply thrown it away.
    I have a set of china.  It isn’t bone china, certainly not Wedgewood bone china, made in England.  My china is light blue, made by Mikasa, and it was given to me on my seventh wedding anniversary by my husband, Garey.  The set lived in my hutch for many years until it was replaced by the more practical set of wildflower dishes made by National Wildlife.  I found the wildflower dishes to be more user-friendly.  China tends to make people nervous.  I packed my blue Mikasa china away in a box.  It is promised to my oldest daughter, Natalie, when she has a place of her own.
    I have earmarked other of my possessions for my daughter, Nikki, as well—my sapphire ring and Martin guitar, to name a couple.  Natalie will get my wedding ring.  When it comes to my valuable possessions, I’ve been careful to designate who gets what, in order to prevent any rift between my daughters after I’m gone.  I realize, of course, it isn’t always the big things that cause splits in families.
    After I drank my tea from the Wedgewood cup, I washed it and put it away in my hutch.  I noticed the white creamer I bought from Avon, probably twenty years ago.  On the handle of the creamer is a small kitten, his face peering over the edge in anticipation at the sweet milk that must be inside.  Those are the kinds of things that divide families, not Martin guitars or Browning shotguns.
    Garey’s mom, Agnes, has so much stuff.  Garey’s dad, J.D., has been gone for over twenty years, and she has gotten rid of very little of the clutter she griped and fussed about when he was alive.  I told Garey and his sister, Charlotte, when Agnes is gone, I will help them clean up the place on the condition that they purchase a ledger with columns for what each of them carries off the place and columns for stuff that is given away, as well as things put into consignment.  The two of them have always had an unusually close and trusting relationship—probably because their parents didn’t—and I never want to see anything come between them.
    The Avon creamer made me think about other things that might cause rifts between my children.  There’s the old metal Peanuts recipe box I’ve had since I first married, an original Pillsbury Doughboy, and a forty-year-old set of Mickey and Minnie figurines bought at Disney World.  I also have a set of Royal Dalton Toby mugs my sister brought back from England with her.  It’s not about what those items are worth monetarily, it’s about what they mean to my children.  Those things have been sitting on my shelves for years.  They are part of the fabric of our home, and they connect our children with their childhood.
    I have very little of what was left of my childhood, mainly a few cracked and worn dishes that were my Grandma Mattingly’s.  I would like to have the wooden paddle churn my stepmom taught me how to churn butter in when we lived on Ashes Creek.  Churning butter is one of just a handful of good memories from that time, but I doubt the churn will be passed on to me.  I’ve always envied people who have things that were passed on from previous generations.  Those things marked their place, proved their existence then marked their passing.  Those things say to the current generation, “You’re not alone.  You’re building on what came before you.” 
    I tell myself I need to take my own advice and buy a ledger with columns to designate who gets what, down to the Avon creamer.  In the end, I’m not sure it will matter.  Maybe my things will suffer the same fate as the Wedgewood tea cup, and they will end up atop a tower of glass bottles in a recycle bin.