Give Them The Best

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Today is Poetry Tea Time. Usually I have the girls drink from a set of thrift store Shabby Chic tea cups, but today is special. Not for any particular reason other than I wanted to make them feel special. 

Our house is a 1920 Victoria Era home with a massive built in hutch where I store my china. It's filled with dainty heirlooms and sundry pieces passed down from loving relatives. Most of the glassware is brought out for special meal times like Thanksgiving or Christmas. But there's one thing I've never used.

My mother gave me this tea set as a wedding gift twelve years ago. It was her mother's and it's from the USSR. It's my *best* china. For twelve years, the delicate cobalt blue and gold has been hidden. Until today.

Today I decided to give the girls my grandmother's best, and invite her to join us for tea. Because they are worth the best. They are worth the gold. They are worth me telling them stories about my French Grandmother who was born in Algiers, with a house wife for a mother and who's father managed a winery.  They are worth cupping the porcelain in their hands, (pinkies up!) sipping warm apple spiced tea, while I tell them how she was so full of class and elegance.

I told them all about how she loved unconditionally, served the most scrumptious food, and how even though she was barely five feet tall, she was a force to be reckoned with! She loved birds the way I do, and I explained once again how my daughter Charlotte was named after her great-grandmother's niece, and her middle name Rose, was from her sister. There are bits and pieces of her sprinkled throughout each one of them. After tea we read one of my favorite stories.(aff) It seemed fitting that we should read of things passed down from one generation to the next.

I didn't freak out or panic thinking something would chip or break. (Well maybe a tiny panic but not enough to show.) What good would this tea set be just sitting in a cabinet? Staring at us, waiting to be held, it's service unused? It would be a shame. Don't let the things of worry or 'one day' interfere with the best. I didn't have to have some long drawn out lecture about how fragile the tea set was. My girls understood. It was old. It was significant to me and it had meaning.  They knew that I valued them enough to share this gift. 

So give them your best too. 

Not gonna lie. I cried a little bit when it was time to clean up. I wanted my grandmother here. I wanted to hear her accent and for her to tell the girls her stories. To hug them and let them breathe in her Estee Lauder perfume.

I didn't notice at first because I was trying to quickly set the table, but there are only six tea cups. One for each of my girls. 💗

Anabelle came to me and thanked me. She said it was the best tea we've had so far and it was nice to have Grandma there.

I thought so too.