The Ka-ching! Issue

My house is filled with crap that at one time or another seemed like a good idea to buy. What, I wonder, was I thinking? Manolo Blahniks that hurt too much to wear, clothes I thought would make me look like Kate Moss, scores of CDs of artists I liked for about 15 minutes and art I bought under the influence of a glass or two of wine and then deeply regretted. Things meant to fill in the blanks. But the possession that meant the most to me was one I didn’t have—the set of French china that belonged to my grandmother who mostly raised me and which was meant to go to me after her death. I remember her holding one of the thin plates up to the light so that I could see her hand through it when I was a child. I asked for the history behind the old china every time she set the table with it on special occasions, and I was thrilled and proud that it would someday pass on to me. But as these things happen, my estranged father and his second wife got my dishes in the free-for-all grab for goods that took place when my grandmother died. For years after, it ate at me. Not only did I not have my dishes, but to add salt to the wound, they had been “stolen” by the man who stole my childhood and ruined my mother’s life. When my father’s wife died, he gave my grandmother’s dishes to my little brother in a sweeping gesture of reconciliation, and my brother then sneaked them to me. I was ecstatic. I had won! The gravy bowl, the soup tureen, the delicate cups and saucers were all going to heal that bitter lack I’d been nursing for so long. But when I opened the boxes and started carefully unwrapping each piece, I knew right away that the magic was gone. They were just inert porcelain, beautiful dishes that didn’t fit my lifestyle. Because when I held them up to the light, the shadow of my grandmother’s hand was missing, that irreplaceable X-ray of love that no money can ever return to me.