Raise A Glass

As part of an ongoing effort to downsize the number of my possessions, I went through my glassware cupboard today. It was a modest effort, but my kitchen cupboards are small—so the extra room will be welcome—and every little bit helps in the long run. The piano's next!

Packing up glassware was a somewhat nostalgic process. There was a set of eight coffee mugs that match my current dinnerware but which I never ever use because they don't hold enough coffee. There were assorted novelty mugs: Homer Simpson, Garden of the Gods in Colorado, an historic general store in Bedford, VA, Mickey Mouse, and a couple of whatevers—none of which passed the capacity test and were also no longer used.

There was a set of cool cocktail glasses that I'd held onto because of their design, but which I finally admitted were obsolete since I don't throw dinner parties anymore. If I ever do, I won't be serving cocktails in retro glasses.

Finally, there were a few small, bowl-shaped crystal champagne glasses, inherited from my mom's cast-off stemware years ago; they still made a sweet ting! when I bumped two of them together.

The whole shebang fit into a cardboard box, swathed haphazardly with packing paper; I didn't do my usual mover's quality level of wrapping, because they were being donated to Goodwill and would only get unwrapped at that end and put on shelves. At least, that was the theory.

I remember my mother's glass-fronted credenzas, changing in furniture style over the years, but always glittering with stemware and treasured objects. Her wine glasses were transparent bubbles in the proper shape and size for white or red wines. Like my champagne glasses, all were made of crystal that sang when you removed a cluster carefully from the cabinet. She also had crystal cocktail glasses, tall and short, for mixed drinks. Then there were the liqueur glasses: fragile schooners for sherry or port, and snifters for after-dinner brandy.

Mom also kept an array of pewter steins for beer, many of which she picked up in the UK on her travels or ordered from Colonial Williamsburg. She also had silver or pewter baby cups, a kind of throwback to our childhood years that continued as a family tradition when grandchildren arrived. We seldom, if ever, drank out of these but they were all engraved with our birth dates and names.

Lead crystal was looked down upon by my mother, except in flower vases—which she also had in abundance, in a variety of shapes.

Unlike me, my mother used her good stemware all the time. She was a great giver of parties and a prolific Mad Men drinker, always keeping a well-stocked bar and hiring a bartender (or press-ganging one of my brothers) to mix and serve up libations at her events. We all knew how to mix a basic drink long before we were of legal age to imbibe. Bartending had its own issues, since my brothers would sometimes surreptitiously empty the guests' discarded glasses into their own gullets and end up sacrificing to the porcelain god after everyone left.

Mom's parties were always sparkling, noisy, and enthusiastic. So it's no surprise that many lovely goblets and glasses met their tinkling deaths in the melée. She replaced them periodically with different sets, evolving as tastes evolved (hence my too-tiny champagne stems). One set of champs flutes were airy as foam and carved with fine vertical furrows; another was oblong and stemless, with deep green crystal bases.

I don't know where those fragile mementos ended up; as her hey-day waned, Mom switched to more prosaic and sturdy cocktail glasses. The stemware broke or went into my siblings' home bars (I lived too far away to want to ship any to my house).

Today, I let the last of mine go. Pulled their dusty forms from the cupboard, washed and rinsed them carefully, and set them down in the box with my other cast-offs. The glasses themselves had little meaning for me, but the memories they evoked were rich and pleasant. I kept a tiny espresso cup and saucer that belonged to my grandmother, hand painted and made in Japan; I never use it, either, but perhaps my granddaughter will find a place for it in her make-believe tea parties.

When I got to Goodwill, I told the donation guy that my box was full of glassware. The lid wasn't even closed on it, and glasses were peeking out from their paper wrappings.

"It's very fragile," I said. "So you probably shouldn't put anything on top of this box."

"Okay, thanks a lot for bringing it in," he said, plopping down my paper bag full of t-shirts on top of the box and swinging the lot up and out of my car.

I started to caution him but he turned away, so I slid into the front seat. As I did, I heard—and I'm not making this up—a tinkling crash echo through the warehouse. I didn't turn around, I couldn't look. It didn't sound as if the box dropped to the floor, more as if it was plunked down hard on top of something else.

As I drove away, I consoled myself with the thought that at least they weren't cluttering up my cupboard anymore. Maybe those stems have joined their many former companions at some great cosmic cocktail party in the sky. It might even be one of my mother's!