Pgh Lesbian Correspondents

While chatting with a friend recently, I commented how I had always wanted Fiesta ware. Our household dishes are a mishmash of inherited partial sets that we never got around to updating. I’m pretty sure they aren’t actually safe in the microwave or dishwasher, but they’ve been fused together by time and determination.

At the same time, there was an appeal to picking out a set of dishes together, even if we picked them out from a thrift store. There would be no emotional ties to other people or other stories, just this new part of an important ritual when we broke bread together. We have I kid you not, four partial sets and a partial china set from my great-grandmother. I’m sure there are more dishes in boxes.

For our wedding, we registered for Fiesta – thinking it was a good time to finally let go of the old dishes. We received a very nice blue platter. So we stuck with the old stuff.

Then life happened.

We never did pick out dishes. The existing dishes were perfectly serviceable. I guess our life was serviceable.

No one tells you how to navigate separated-but-still-living-together things. So I gravitated toward using the plates I brought with me – a floral pattern a former client of mine had passed along in 2001. Nice, but no real connection.

Because I do really feel like my life as part of any family has ended, those floral dishes stated me in the face each day as a reminder that my time for choices was rapidly ending. And the pool of people from whom I can inherit things like dishes has shrunk considerably to really no one.

The aforementioned friend suggested I get my own Fiesta from places like Marketplace or a thrift store. She suggested Marketplace might prove better at finding a lot of pieces.

What an excellent idea. I don’t need full place settings. I don’t need cups and saucers. I do need to feel joy.

I ventured onto Marketplace and almost immediately found two different listings for plates and bowls. One was a discontinued lilac and the other a scarlet color. Eight pieces each – 2 dinner plates each color, 1 bistro plate each color, 4 small plates and 4 bowls or so.

I immediately thought of this line “When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple, with a red hat which doesn’t go and doesn’t suit me” from the Red Hat Society.

Why must I wait for the perfect domestic situation to do something nice for myself? Not only are the dishes fun, they are much less toxic that the pre-1970s items in current rotation. A health investment.

Two plate sets are fine because I eat 99% of my meals alone or with my cats who aren’t allowed any plates. Technically, I have four plates and two bistro dishes so I could entertain five people. It wasn’t terribly expensive, although with my living and legal expense funding running rather low – it was extravagant.

I took as auspicious the fact that the seller and I had several mutuals so I sought confirmation I wasn’t being hoodwinked. I was not. I receive a really nice deal on the two lots together, far less than ordering a restaurant meal. The seller was lovely – very kind when I could not immediately find a ride to pick up the plates.

Yesterday, Marie and I went to pick them up in Allison Park and today they are cleaned and in my cupboard.

The flower dishes need to be packed, some of the cups are in the same corner of the cupboard where I put them in 2005 after I moved in. I am fully committed to giving them away on Buy Not a Thing, not saving them for a rainy day. If a rainy day happens in my future, I’ll figure out new place setting options.

This has been a rough week for me on multiple levels. My stress levels are very high. I’ve been consuming kale smoothies as my major meal so while I can admire the dishes – I need to actually use them.

The moment of joy and self-care when I opened the box was delicious. It didn’t’ last very long because of my sadness so I’m chalking it up as joy-adjacent.

I just realized I do have a piece of Fiesta ware – an oversize cup and saucer that I use for soup. And cereal. Where did I come from? I can’t remember.

I’m not afraid of growing old so much as I am of growing dependent. Whimsy is cute and that, but being a whimsical woman of a certain age requires the rent and the phone bill be paid. When you are alone, you don’t need to wear any sort of hat.

When I look ahead, I feel pure terror. Everything I thought was right was wrong. It is going to take me awhile to get to the point where all that’s wrong is right.

Perhaps in a few years, I’ll revisit this post while supping on a casserole piled plentifully on my red (or purple) Fiesta plate. I wish that future self could reach out to me now with some words of comfort.

---

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick the flowers in other people’s gardens
And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practise a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

---

Jenny Joseph