My daughter-in-law served nineteen people on her good china that Thanksgiving.
She handed me a paper plate.
“Sorry, Joan,” she said, loud enough for the whole table to hear. “You always break things.”
Somebody laughed. Not much. Just enough.
I looked down the long table at my son. Kevin was looking very hard at the turkey.
He didn’t say a word.
I held that paper plate with both hands so it wouldn’t bend, and I ate every bite. Then, on my way out, I handed my granddaughter a heavy box that I had kept under my chair the entire meal.
By the time she opened it, nobody at that table was laughing anymore.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me start where it really started, which was three weeks earlier, with a phone call and a single dinner plate.
Kevin called me on a Sunday in early November. He calls most Sundays. Not for long. Ten minutes, maybe, while he’s driving to the hardware store or waiting for Tyler to finish soccer practice. I’m seventy four years old and I’ve learned to take ten minutes and be grateful.
“Brittany wants to host again this year,” he said. “Her whole family’s coming. Her parents, Shannon and Mike, Lauren and Doug, all the kids.”
“That’s a lot of people.”
“Twenty, if you come.”
“Of course I’m coming.”
“Good. Good.” He paused. Kevin pauses the way his father did, right before he says the thing he actually called to say. “She’s really excited this year, Mom. She found the seventh plate.”
“The seventh what?”
“The china. You know, the stuff she collects. She’s been hunting for it for six years. She found another plate at some estate sale in Ohio last month. Now she’s got seven, so she says that’s enough to use for the grown ups’ end of the table.”
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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