Keeping Stuff For Good

When growing up and playing in the dining room of my grandparents’ farmhouse with my cousins, I remember being told to be careful of the china cupboard because it held all of my grandmother’s china, including tea cups with matching saucers and serving dishes, as well as plates and silverware kept in a particular box lined with velvet. We were told most everything in that china cupboard was kept for good.

When I was a little girl I loved sitting in the middle of my parents’ bed and looking through my mother’s jewelry box covered with-yes again, velvet-midnight blue velvet. Everything in that jewelry box seemed to glisten. Gently touching the strands of jewels and stones and rings that glittered, I felt like a princess getting ready for the ball. But there were a few things I’d been told not to touch, like the long, narrow box holding my mother’s pearls and another holding a cameo brooch with matching earrings my father bought for my mother. I’d been told those pieces were kept for good.

When my children and their cousins were newborns-to-toddlers, my mother would go shopping for them at a little boutique in my hometown. It was owned by a wonderful woman with a warm smile. The merchandise equaled any shop in Manhattan. Besides rattles and cuddly blankets and sweaters and soft nightgowns, knitted outfits with little ducks or bears stitched in for accents were available in gentle baby shades as well as snow whites and earth tones. Along with sweater-like tops, the knitted outfits included knitted shorts or long knitted pants. And no matter what you bought, it was wrapped in tissue paper and placed inside a white box with her shop name stamped on top. When you received a gift from that shop, you were aware that what was inside was top quality. So most of the time when one of my children received a gift from my mother wrapped inside one of those boxes, I put that gift aside. I kept it for good. That meant those knitted outfits were hardly ever worn and eventually, they were outgrown.

We all keep stuff for good. We all have our good shoes-a good dress-good tie-good jewelry-good suit-good china-good linens-good blankets-good this-good that. Keeping stuff for good comes with the possibility of putting stuff away and forgetting about it and what good is that?

Wouldn’t it be more fun to bring some of that good stuff out and use it or wear it on a normal, run-of-the-mill, ordinary, no special reason, no special occasion day? When you think about it, every day, despite our problems and worries, is a good day. When you really think about it, we are blessed to be living it.

So maybe—just maybe, once in a while or once a year or just on a Saturday, have your morning coffee in a china cup with a saucer, wear your pearls to breakfast or your cameo brooch to lunch or serve dinner on those china plates kept for good no matter if that dinner is but a hotdog.

After all, stuff is just stuff. Every day is a good day.

(Photo was taken in my grandparents’ farmhouse in the dining room on an Easter Sunday of long ago. Top left you can see a bit of my grandmother’s china cupboard. Sitting around the table: my father, my mother, my sister, my grandmother, my cousin and her mother-my aunt).