A Legacy of Dishwashing

I use my good china and other antique dishes, not every day, but every once in a while on an ordinary day, and especially for a dinner party or birthday.  There’s a risk the dish will be damaged, but what’s the use in letting it sit in the cabinet?  Cleaning up adds it’s own set of issues. My own rule of thumb is that dishes and glassware that predate dishwashers should be hand-washed.  Actually, the dishwasher is probably a lot safer than the slippery suds and hard enamel of my kitchen sink, but it’s what my mother does, heck it’s what my grandmother did , so it’s just one of those things that you do because you do it. Maybe it’s in my DNA.
Over the weekend, I was tempted to break my own rule because there were sooooo many dishes from the thirty plus guests we had for a surprise party. But I held fast and after loading the dishwasher with the same old, same old, I settled in to ever so carefully make sure that the oldest collectibles were treated with more respect.
There are actually people out there that really don’t mind doing the dishes from a large gathering, and I’m just starting to get a glimmer of why. After the preparations, negotiations, and planning, there is a certain lovely solace in stopping and making circles in bubbly water.  It’s even better if you have someone to dry and stack for you because then you get to share the scoop on the event. My grandmother never let anyone else wash the good stuff.

So, as I settled into my own dishwashing at 10:30pm on Sunday night, I thought about my grandmother and her dishwashing, and since I was now the one washing her dishes thought about how many times before me she had washed these very same dishes.  I remember the dishes as a child, so I know they’ve been around for a long time.  (no comment on how long…)

We served green tea ice cream in them, and I thought about the fact that they’ve probably never held green tea ice cream before.  I also have a set of antique porcelain moon-shaped dishes my friend Lili gave to me when she packed up her family to move back to New England.   The hand-painted Uriarte Talavera we picked up on our honeymoon also found their way out onto the buffet.  I think we served chocolate decadence on those, with fresh whipped cream and raspberries.

It was somehow just nice to stop, even if it was to wash dishes, and to think about not the pieces themselves, but the events and people surrounding the pieces.  I thought about how many times my grandmother had washed her dishes.  And I wondered who would be washing my dishes one day.