The colors of vanilla piled up like that. Of course I've been thinking about vintage ironstone lately. Tucked between the big and small projects, the schlepping of boys, the appointments (scheduled & sudden), and the cleaning of muddy paws several times a day (you know it's been raining here, which of course means it's been mudding here), I've been thinking about antique ironstone, no doubt set off by the recent crashing to the floor of my most-used white platter. Shards are useless when plating food, as you know.
Maybe it's not just the loss of the platter, maybe it's the tail-of-winter-but-not-yet-spring turn of the year and the taking of inventory that goes with it, maybe it's the anticipation of summer evenings with the long picnic table by the creek laden with food piled high on giant white oval plates. Maybe it's all of that.
So many things we've edited from our lives since moving into the little house nearly four years ago. So many. Things that were, come to find out, not necessary to our enjoyment of life. Things don't fulfill. And superfluous things take far more than they give. I can now say never have there been truer words.
But.
The right things can make an experience sweeter, can make life sweeter.
Steaming pancakes, straight off the griddle, stacked ever so teeteringly-high on a white platter and set in front of seven hungry boys. Grilled cheese, softly melted and crisply crunched, cut fancy on the diagonal and towered like wooden blocks, borne by ironstone, and set right beside the deep pot of roasted tomato soup. And on that birthday, when the elcairs were swiped from the grocery store bakery box and piled onto the platter, then sprinkled with edible confetti and poked with birthday candles, we all forgot that there was nothing homemade about them.
I want these experiences. Again and again, with an ever-changing cast of hungry folk around the table, filling up. Gracious, yes. Dinner plates can stand in for the broken platter for a time, but I admit I've already commenced trolling for another.
A large one. In ironstone. In white.
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