Grandma Lucille's Tea Cup

I never knew my Grandma Lucille.  I didn't know her personality or what kind of person she was.  The only thing I knew her by was her porcelain tea cup that sat on a shelf in my dad's closet.  Grandma Lucille is actually my great grandmother and she died before I was born.  All I really know about her is that my dad was very fond of her homemade French toast. 

A beautiful tea cup is all that my dad has to remember his grandmother by.  The porcelain cup and saucer are hand painted with delicate looking flowers around the rim and long green vines that wind down the cup and continue onto the saucer.  The porcelain is very thin and looks like it should not be touched by any hands at all let alone the rough hands of tyrannical toddler, but all I ever wanted to do as a little girl was pull it down from the shelf and play with it.  My parents knew my affection towards the tea cup.  However, I was never allowed to touch it.  Every time my parents caught me in the closet trying to get to the tea cup I would get a lecture on “looking not touching”. 

One year for my birthday my parents gave me my very own tea set.  It had six little plastic cups that were just big enough to be used by a doll and matching plates.  The tea pot was plastic as well.  All of the plates and cups had a single pink flower on them.  I loved the tea set.  I would fill the tea pot up with root beer, my dad’s favorite drink, and when he got home from work I would poor the root beer into each of the six tea cups and he would drink all of them. 

I loved the tea set but it still didn’t compare to Grandma Lucille’s tea cup in my eyes.  My mom would still find me in the closet taking peaks at the cup.  The next year for my birthday I received another tea set.  This time there were four little cups and four little plates and one tea pot and they were all porcelain.  At the time I thought it was the best birthday present I had ever received.  This new tea set was all shiny white porcelain.  Along with the tea set came paint.  My mother told me that I could paint the set any way I wanted.  I took me a few days to decide how I was going to paint them, but I decided to paint them like Grandma Lucille’s tea cup. 

I followed my mother into the closet and watched as she lifted the tea cup off of the shelf.  This was the first time that I had ever seen the tea cup in great detail.  It was beautiful and in perfect condition.  I could see the flowers better.  I wasn’t sure what kind of flowers they were, they certainly weren’t anything I had ever seen growing in my mother’s garden.  The flower’s petals were purple and you could see the hand painted strokes.  The vines that flowed down from the flowers were elegant.  The tea cup and saucer had a glaze on them that made them shine.

My mother put the cup on the kitchen table and again lectured me on how I was not allowed to touch the cup but that I could only look at it.  Even if I couldn’t touch the cup I felt proud that my mom took down the cup just for me to see.  Then I started to paint my tea set to match Grandma Lucille’s tea cup.  Of course mine turned out nothing like the intricate and beautiful designs that were carefully painted onto Grandma Lucille’s ancient cup, but I was happy nonetheless. 

I played with that tea set until I got too old to play with toys, although I still have it to this day.  On the day of my seventeenth birthday my family and I sat down at the same kitchen table to open presents.  The very first present that I opened was a little box with  purple wrapping paper and a green ribbon tied in a bow.  Inside the box was Grandma Lucille’s tea cup.  Now sitting on top of my desk in my room is the porcelain tea set from when I was a little girl and Grandma Lucille’s tea cup.