I love stories.
Like, a lot.
I come this great big family of story tellers. They are all a lot better and a lot funnier than I am, if I am being honest about it. Family gatherings, for as long as I can remember, have involved three things: cheese and crackers, pinochle, and telling stories. And I really, really love them all. My fondest family memories involve sitting around a card table, first listening and watching while my aunts, uncles, older cousins, and other undefinable relations played pinochle – a rather incomprehensible game to an outsider but really the best thing ever to the initiated – and swapped tales, and, when I was older, being at the table myself. It is home in the clearest, warmest way possible and what I look forward to with every trip back to Pittsburgh.
Some of the stories told at these gatherings are new – job site follies, work, daily adventures, dating, kids. But a lot are old – stories we have heard a million times but always need told just once more, because one can never quite remember the details – my Aunt Jane carving “Elvis” into her arm with a knife (or was it a pen?), my mom accidentally dying my grandma’s hair green (or was it one of my aunts?), my Aunt Lorie locking Uncle Ed in the playpen (or was it Fred?), Pap-Pap saying you always bid to 25 on a bare ace (or was it 24?). The telling and retelling of these stories – so deeply rooted in our city and our past – gave me a sense of self, a place I belong and and am connected to through our own personal lore. We have this incredible family history and we pass it down around the card table. Which is pretty cool, if you ask me. I have no doubt that my kids, and my siblings’ and cousins’ kids, will, one Christmas many, many years from now, be telling some of these same stories to their kids, long after the rest of us are gone.
All of that is a terribly long way to get right back to: I really like telling stories. But even more, I like hearing other people’s stories. I am forever trying to nudge the people I like best to tell me something I don’t know or describe their family or talk about their day. And one of the best parts about having a blog is that sometimes I don’t have to ask – sometimes they just come my way, from hand written missives to long chats in the hall to email.
Yesterday I got this email from a friend I went to college with. He was a few years ahead of me, the RA in my dorm freshman year. I didn’t know him terribly well – our social circles never overlapped in the way the put us in the same place at the same time all that often – but I was always fond of him and a fan, because he liked to build and make things with his own hands and he was interesting and creative and kind. Since I started my little Blog-venture, I have heard from him on occasion and it has been a treat. He sent this email, with the subject line of “Re: St. Valentine’s Forks” and it is wonderful and such a great story. Such a great story, in fact, that I felt compelled to ask if I could share. (He said yes, in case that wasn’t clear.)
Dear P. Sully,
Every so often I attempt a “lovely and generous gesture” in response to your writing and my excess. Today’s offer is tan earthenware and used used utensils. I’m not as overstocked with glasses, but dishes and butter knives, most definitely.
It all started with the prospect of marriage. I once knew a girl, and through some unfortunate confluence of well-intended but unworkable social conditioning, we were engaged to be wed. She insisted that we register for “gifts” at Bed Bath and Beyond–wherein I used the laser-operated greed-selector gun to mark some silverware for some family member’s obligatory purchase. It was the only selection I made at the store. It was a somewhat miserable experience. I–and we–didn’t need anything else. She chose a number of other items. Soon thereafter, a bridal shower was held and one of her aunts bought the forks. Not long after that, my love and I invited some friends over for dinner. Before that occasion we unpacked the new utensils and I retired the forks, knives, and spoons that I inherited from my college house. With great lightness of conscience, I went back to Calvin College and left a grocery bag in front of Commons Dining Hall marked with a small note saying “thanks”. My fiancee told me a couple months later that it would be too much work to be in a relationship with me. I really liked the forks and had thrown away the box. My now-ex returned other gifts she received, and when she told her aunt that I offered to pay for the flatware, the lady replied that if they wouldn’t invoke bad feelings, I could just keep them. Piercing, cutting, biting, whipping, mashing, and chewing do not invoke bad feelings. Besides, I really like the silverware. I similarly received a wedding-shower gift card and was told to keep it. I went to Pier-1 and bought new dishes to serve friends a meal on my next birthday and salad tongs, and a candle for each bathroom.
Four years later, marriage still seemed like a good life-thing to do, but this time I had met someone with a similar interest in silverware. Her name is —. Some of our first shared experiences were in the kitchen aisles of thrift stores selecting every non-rusted, and non-plastic fork, knife, and spoon we could find. At each store, we bought all except the last few (because emptying-out what could be welfare-recipient’s, or lawyer’s main shopping center just isn’t cool), and in a matter of weeks, we had over 300 sets. My mother soaked them in boiling water and wrapped them in sets, each in a brown paper shop rag and a green paper ribbon. I’m fairly certain that each of our wedding guests received a unique combination of utensils. We didn’t register for wedding gifts. We both had dishes and blenders and towels, thank you very much. (And we didn’t want to think about more stuff while working, going to school, and planning a wedding in 4 months.) There was one passing comment we made about some Fiesta dishes we saw at a local hardware store. That landed us more than a cupboard full and sent my pier ones to shelf zero in the basement–not far from the roughly 1000 shiny tools I keep in a plastic treasure chest. Like a war chest for a picnic. I haven’t quite brought myself to send them to the unknown in need, but the prospect of sending them cross-continent because I know an author, seemed like a great idea.
Actually, I was thinking of you because —- and I are going to Seattle to visit her sister and are going to Eugene to visit some other Grand Rapids expats. ‘Mermaid Cave was the first I’ve read in a while. I had planned a much more mundane, “hey person I haven’t seen in almost a decade, I’ll be in your city wanna meet?”email. A story about forks and plates seemed much more appropriate than saying “my wife and I will be in Seattle” and asking if you want to meet-up. We’ll fly in and out on March 3 and 10, and I plan to go to a coffee shop, the fish market, Eugene Oregon, and possibly see Boeing sometime in between. I also propose the possibility of you meeting us over food or drinks. Let me know if you’re interested in dishes: from Michigan to keep, or some in Seattle to be rented with contents.
