March 20, 1995
It’s my grandmother’s fault I’m a klutz: When she was a child she broke a glass while visiting a friend. The mother made a big fuss. Grandma determined to use tin cups before she would act like that.
By the time I came along, Grandma had plastic and kept her really valuable glass dishes locked in the china closet.
At home, my mother, her daughter, had plastic for daily use.
Our hard plastic plates were tolerated by my dad’s friend, who made yearly visits. However, he brought new glass glasses every time and we always needed them.
Before I married, my husband-to-be and I debated dishes. He hated the plastic I had grown up with because of the taste. I voted against his family’s aluminum and its metallic flavor. That only left us glass.
Our babies used non-breakable dishes, but as they grew, they joined the plate-breaking brigade. Glass plates, bowls and glasses are very fragile. We have gone through several sets: white with blue trim, restaurant sturdy ironstone white, provincial brown, maroon with r
oses and brown and orange stripes on white break-resistant glass.
We only have the autumn-colored set because we bought six dozen plates.
I’m ready for a change, but the things do not break very easily, I still have a few dozen left to break before we get another set. Not to worry though, breakables cannot escape forever from me.
Glasses fall out of my hands as I carry them. Plates crack and chip somewhere between the table and the dishwasher. Broken bowls disappear into the trash.
My personal best was the weekend I decided to make chocolate chip cookies.
Since I am addicted to the things, I have to quadruple the batch or compete ferociously with the children for the cookies. I had the huge mixing bowl filled and the beater running when someone knocked at the door. I set the bowl and mixer on a bar stool and turned to answer the knock.
The bowl smashed to the floor, mixing shards of glass in the cookie dough. The mixer klunked on to its side breaking the handle. Since we had purchased it at flea market during the poverty years of early marriage, I was long overdue to buy a brand new (plastic) mixer and glass bowl set.
I began making another batch of cookies. I made sure I left the mixer on the counter far away from the edge whenever I stopped to take care of something.
After the first trays of cookies had cooled, I gathered them on a plate, juggled to make them fit in the cupboard and went to church.
When we returned, I opened the cupboard door to get something for lunch and the plate of cookies fell out onto the mixing bowl – breaking it and adding glass to the remainder of the second batch of cookie dough.
The plate holding the cookies broke, mixing sharp flecks of glass with soft chewy chocolate chip cookies.
I did not try to make any more cookies that weekend. I served ice cream cones for dessert instead.