Ida Mae's Bowl

It was a thoroughly tough guy, manly man move...

when all the china broke?

not all of it, thank God, I was keeping Grandma's bowl somewhere else.

Mama kind of winces when she remembers when the guys moved the china cabinet away from the wall WITHOUT taking the stuff inside, OUT--first.  It wasn't just glass and pretty patterns that came crashing out of the doors in a hideous kaleidoscopic horror.

To mama it was the most shiny, fragile, pretty part of our Quilt.

just stuff, she justifies.

Lara Lynn Lane, MaryBeth Lane, and Mama--Sherry Candy Lane

"Ida Mae's heart was broke too when they had the fire at Elias' farm.  She had one room with pretty things.  That's where she kept the oil painting of Grandma Pearl.  Your grandma, Betty, said that was gorgeous."

"She got to see it?"

Our conversation is cut short by me and Mama's arrival to the dining room...

 where Ida Mae's bowl is currently on display in Mama's Museum of Memories.

"See it even has her engraving on it," Mama says.

We know it's technically not an engraving but it's our way of honoring fancy to call a regular thing like a name tag on something, something fancy.

I don't touch the bowl, just look.


"I'm still trying to figure out who the artist was who might have painted Grandma Pearl's portrait," I assure Mama.

A few days later we are in a Goodwill new-to-me-store and Mama pulls a small plate from a bin of dishware.  "This is the pattern that Grandma Pearl had!  I'm telling you, this is it!"

I look at the pinks and yellows and dainty blues and try to place the object in my mind WITH Grandma Pearl in my mind.  I almost make a comment like, she had good taste or something like that, when I don't.

I move closer to Mama picking through the bin of dishware and just listen.  Pretty soon, she says, "It wasn't fancy back then with Pearl.  I think she got those plates at the A & P.  Those stores they gave stuff like that away, you know, and Pearl'd get a piece here and a piece there."



But never a whole set, I could almost finish Mama's sentence.

Pearl did get a set of purple MEL-MAC dishes from her daughter Betty one birthday.  "But we weren't allowed to use those," Mama explains.  No matter how much Betty PROMISED they wouldn't get scratched, Pearl didn't know about plastic.

Just wanting to save pretty...is definitely one of the themes of the women in my family.

Grandma Pearl Fox with Sherry Candy Lane, 1991

June 2013--Mama says as we're eating packaged noodles with baked chicken and corn...You haven't lived unless you've tasted Grandma Pearl's homemade egg noodles and chicken broth.

Apparently Grandma Pearl would roll them out on the enamel coated kitchen table and cut them into strips.  But Mama didn't catch the secrets of her chicken broth.  She and her son Stephen, though, have been perfecting a chicken soup for years.  It's one of several from-scratch recipes which are called Steve's Two O'Clock Soups.  Extremely HOT & DELICIOUS, I sewed onto an embroidered apron for Mama to wear while she prepares all the vegetables.