Never Out Of Style

Long, long ago, a woman gave her grand daughter a set of small porcelain dishes, a tea set. Tiny dinnerware so fine and elegant the light would shine through its edges like a milky stain glass window. It was more than that, though. It was a dinner set with tiny covered casserole, gravy boat and serving platter. There were small knives, forks and spoons. It was a taste of old Charleston elegance, a sip of time past when little girls wore long curls, long dresses and played on real stoves made small. It was a reminder of the grandmother's childhood when that first embroidered handkerchief appeared before she was five. A time when children were miniature adults and treasured beings whose time on earth was filled with being useful, or cut mercilessly short by a lack of antibiotics and simple necessities. It was a gift of love meant to be used and savored for a very long time.

The little girl's mother did not understand. She took the beautiful gift, placed it high on a shelf and never allowed the little girl to play with it. Once in a while the mother took it down, dusted off the top of the box, pulled the straw gently away from the tiny plates and allowed her to look at it, but if the child reached out even one chubby little finger she was quickly admonished not to touch and the box was put back on the shelf for another day. What that day was supposed to be no one will ever know because eventually the little girl grew up and forgot about her tiny box of beautiful cups and saucers.

One day the little girl fell in love and married. The grandmother made her a beautiful red table cloth and a set of napkins to match as a wedding gift, not something most people received in the sixties when life was all ironstone and avocado and harvest gold. It was a small linen cloth, made to fit a bridge table, or tea table and given to a generation even less likely to play bridge than the one before it. Still, it was a lovely gift, made with a craftsmanship and style forgotten by most women who were more likely to sew gingham mini dresses and wear love beads than drink tea from porcelain cups. The girl used it when she made chocolate fondues and then put it away and forgot it.

Many years later, when that little girl had children of her own, she remembered her tea set and the small red table cloth that was tucked away on another shelf way back high in the closet. She remembered what her mother had said and did not give the tiny dishes to her own daughter to play with, but she did get them out a few times and served tea on the small red table cloth to very appreciative little girls. And boys too, because her sons also invited friends over for luncheon and ate cookie cutter peanut butter and jelly sandwiches off of the plates while drinking apple juice from the little cups. Time passed and her little girl grew up and had little girls of her own.

She didn't see these little girls very often, but one day, while they were still small she got out the tea set and the little red table cloth and they ate their lunch on the little table at the end of her kitchen counter and it was such a sweet moment she never forgot it. It made her think of her own grandmother, a. little girl who grew up far away in the Carolinas and learned to sew when today's children were still watching Sesame Street. These little girls grew up too.

Now the little girl who received a beautiful porcelain set of dishes from her grandmother when she was very small, is a grandmother one more time. Today was her birthday, so she got out her lovely little dishes and wiped them clean of the dust that has accumulated while they waited for the newest little diner. He is two years old, about the same age the little girl's grandmother was when she drank her first Cambridge tea. The little red table cloth covered his small table and it was set for a party. There was a tiny cake shaped like a dog, ice cream carved into tiny white balls, small hot dogs stuffed with cheese and baked in biscuits and chocolate poured from a porcelain tea pot. He used the small red napkin by the side of his plate, sang happy birthday in his high baby voice and it was a perfect day.

It was an old fashioned birthday, once more in the Carolinas. A birthday filled not with expensive store bought gifts no one can afford, but the gifts of love and good cheer and good manners surrounding the singing of songs and instruments played by those attending. It was a birthday filled with sweet smiles and sweet hugs and sweet food just like it might have been when his great great grandmother was growing up in the long aftermath of the civil war. It was a gift passed down through the ages from another grandmother who loved a little girl as much as I love Brooke and Tiffany and Lennon.

Love's legacy never goes out of style.