A Full Plate    

This year finds me sorting through my stuff, glad that our married and single children will soon be all together again. I shuffle spatulas around, wondering why everything looks so grimy when I know everything was cleaned before it was put back into the cabinets. Had I been in such a rush last year to get to the pizza part of the evening that my cleaning had been halfhearted? Or was it that inferior neon-pink dish soap that had caused this griminess?

I’m conducting my usual inventory when I come across an unhappy find. In my attempt to cram everything into the cabinets last year, I accidentally wedged my water pitcher too close to a stack of plates, and one had cracked.

Ouch.

Now, lest you assume that this casualty was an heirloom from my Bubby Goldberg or Bubby Singer, it wasn’t. Nor was it a once-in-a-lifetime Home Goods find or a treasured wedding gift.

The casualty is a hard plastic sectional plate, meant for babies, with a delicate countryside design. It features frolicking sheep in a pasture in one section, a long-maned pony in the next, and a bucolic farmhouse in the last. There is a pastel border reminiscent of the 1990s, when we had received the plate. It is quaint. Oh, how I adore quaint.