The bowls have been with me since
1973. I know the date because they belonged
to Aunt Marion, and that was the year she died. Now, plastic would never be indicative of the
fancy, and somewhat glamorous life she’d led.
Aunt Marion worked on Madison Avenue in the media department
of an advertising agency and that was plenty fancy to us.Aunt Marion was the kind of woman who had a dressing table, with a mirror above, and an upholstered oval bench to sit upon, where an enraptured seven year old could lift the delicate bottles and sniff slowly, pick up powder puffs and make believe she was a stylish woman, who went “to business” and dressed up every day in fine dresses and gloves, stockings and heels. Aunt Marion wore a black Persian Lamb coat in the winter. It had a brown mink collar and a silken lining of turquoise and pink stripes. It appeared to weigh her down, it was so heavy; when she shrugged out of its warm cocoon, you caught a whiff of her expensive perfume seeping out, ever so lightly. My sister and I fought over who got to carry it into the bedroom to place on the bed when she visited. It was very heavy, but there would be the silk scarf, pushed gently into the sleeve, the striped silk lining smooth and scented with her perfume.
Later on, she remained
glamourous but slightly bent. She would laugh and say that her Persian lamb
coat was too heavy. But her arthritis got
very bad. Dishes were harder to pick up,
and more likely to be dropped and broken.
Uncle Harry, fifteen years older than she, tried to help out in the
kitchen, but that never went well.
One Christmas, I gave her a
small set of Boonton Ware: two each of dinner plates, lunch plates, cereal
bowls and soup bowls. Maybe there were
cups as well. They were colorful and fun (red, school bus yellow, dark blue,
white); meant to amuse, rather than serve as a reminder of the difficulty they
were both adjusting to, in their lives.
Six months later my sisters and
I traveled to Queens, meeting at the small attached house of Marion and Harry.
They had lived in the upstairs apartment for many years, having converted the
living space downstairs for rental income. The house was sold. There wasn’t much to empty out. Harry had been moved to a nursing home, where
he seemed to thrive, unaware of where his sweet Marion was or had been, entertaining
the other residents with tap dances and old vaudeville routines.
We ended up in the kitchen, not
wanting to spend time in the small living room, where our glamorous Aunt had
succumbed to pneumonia while lying on her French provincial pink sofa. We divvied up assorted items, mostly boxing it
to give away. It was decided I should take the bright plastic ware. The plastic ware traveled back to New Jersey
with me; my kids used the bowls regularly.
When the “great divide”
happened in the mid 80’s, I left most everything behind. But some things had been packed, and two dark
blue shallow bowls were all that remained of the plastic ware.
Many times I moved, maybe six
times since then, and still those bowls rest in each cabinet in each kitchen. They match nothing, but I have ritual uses
for them. Like morning oatmeal when I
need to rush for work; the plastic cools it down fast, making it easier to eat;
yogurt with strawberries on the deck.
The Aunt Marion memories are
not always strongly present, but a hint of her lovely smile flits across my
thoughts when I reach for them. I don’t
need to look at the photo of her standing on the boardwalk dressed in a
clinging white dress and an outrageous hat.
Or see her tenderly holding one of us as babies, in her bold print dress
and large brimmed straw hat with a massive flower on one side, her eyes tender. She was beauty and grace and she softened our
lives.
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