Pink and Green
Favorite memories of meals at home included Mom’s Desert Rose dishes. Even before she could afford to buy settings of it, she’d fallen in love with it during WWII and bought the rosebud salt and pepper shakers and the darling individual ash trays. Yes, ash trays, but I never saw Dad flick ashes from his unfiltered Camels in one.
When Dad installed Mom’s white Youngstown kitchen cabinets with black countertops. She decorated the kitchen in pink and green, and served porkchops with potatoes and gravy on luncheon sized Desert Rose plates. Colors of my childhood.
I didn’t want china when we got married. I bought Melmac to take to Idaho where Guy was stationed before Vietnam. When we eventually settled down, I admitted that I still didn’t want fine china but I’d enjoy having some Desert Rose dishes like I grew up with. Mom and Guy both enjoyed gifting me something in that pattern, especially if they could find it American made (yes, you can tell the difference), until I sure had a collection of it!
Grandma Leora was here for her last Mother’s Day celebration. I later realized I’d used those dishes against a pink tablecloth covered with one she’d crocheted. After Guy asked the blessing, Grandma leaned over to me–in that perky way she went about such things–and asked, “Do I recognize something?” Indeed, little Grandma. What a blessed memory. 1987
We’re in the season of downsizing. Son Dan and his wife Renee aren’t interested in the Desert Rose dishes. I let most of them go when Mom’s things were auctioned.
But I kept my mother’s old Desert Rose from the farm along, along with those rosebud salt and pepper shakers and the ash trays.