Teacup
Lou Ann Pleva
As the whole world shutters against an invisible virus, we are all feeling fragile, susceptible, and watchful. I had already been home bound for a few years by mobility issues that sidelined me from even the most basic tasks like shopping or strolling the neighborhood. Solitude is already my norm. Then a month before my 61st birthday this summer, an event I expected to be a non-event, two things happened simultaneously that I could never have predicted.
I'd started a free short-term subscription to a newspaper archive and also reconnected online with a long-lost beloved cousin, Rose. She and I joyfully emailed and phoned, catching up on news from the last few decades, and I shared news articles from the archive about ourselves in younger years and family members from before our time. Ours was not like many families which enjoy reunions and stay connected through generations, so any morsel of family news was magical to me, like an SOS being seen from my deserted island. So, when I found the obituary for our mutual great-grandmother Mary, who emigrated from Poland to our hometown in the late 1800s and about whom I knew nothing, it excited me doubly because I now had my cousin, which was miracle enough, with whom to share this extraordinary find.
On my birthday a couple weeks later, a package arrived. Rose sent two gorgeous beaded crosses she made herself. And a teacup and saucer set, very lovely fine porcelain with pale pink roses and gilt scalloped edges. Roses from Rose. She knew I have a passion for tea. They seemed old but in pristine condition. The maker's mark looked much like the Polish eagle and it piqued my curiosity, so I searched online and found it was made by a German company, C. T. Altwasser, but that particular mark design was only used from 1875 to 1939. Looking further, I discovered that the company was located in Silesia which was variously Poland or Germany depending on the border shifts. As I read, I instinctively felt that this is hugely significant, that my family - whom I know so painfully little about - had been there generations ago and that my great-grandmother Mary, who left her homeland to trust the future elsewhere, had a connection to this very spot on the map. I felt it as sure as my own heartbeat. "
I held that teacup in my hands and marveled at it. The daintiness is unmistakable, it commands attention be paid. You can see through it when held to a light. Yet there is no chip or stain or even the tiniest crack in either piece. Not one. No flaw mars the glossy smoothness of the glaze laid well over a century ago. The gilt edges still gleam in precise, thin lines like a new bride's wedding band. The mauve and palest pink roses drape elegantly, some buds await their bloom on thornless stems and tri-colored green leaves dance among them against the purest white background. Even one petite sprig curves inside the cup where you could spend a moment feasting your eyes on the graceful artistry while you sip.
Could it have been a part of Mary's wedding china, perhaps a gift from her own mother to start her new married life? Did she display it proudly and bring it out for special celebrations, set her table carefully with a tablecloth she embroidered as the kitchen aromas fragranced her home? Did they all gather at the table laden with these dishes to bless the meals for Wigilias and First Holy Communions and anniversaries and then the final meal together before she departed, likely never to return? Did she wash and dry it with cloths she wove? Did she pack it with the utmost care in a barrel with layers of barn straw to protect it for the long, uncertain voyage westward across the breadth of the European continent and the thousands of miles of uncaring roiling ocean? On how many wagons and train cars was it hauled to and from? How many porters did she admonish to be very careful, please, it's fragile? And what meal, after all those unforgiving miles and efforts, in a strange and primitive Pennsylvanian coal-mining town, did she serve her family when she finally tossed the straw aside and examined each piece for damage before laying it upon her table?
Or did she just unpack two teacups and saucers first, and with her husband, sit exhausted but excited near the coal stove to savor a warming, fortifying cup of tea in the stillness and permanence of what would be her home evermore? Was this teacup I held in my hands in this frightful 21st century, the same one she sipped from as she wrote letters home to Poland, in her kitchen near the coal train tracks, telling of their safe arrival, of struggles endured and conquered, of vegetable gardens planted and of friends made and babies born, babies whom I would know in their old ages?
Or was my imagination getting the better of me? Was my lack of family and long solitude now conjuring phantoms, my isolation inventing connections? Her house was familiar to me but only from the outside. I grew up two blocks away, and often played near it. It sat at the foot of a steep street on one side and a coal mountain on the other with just her house and the train tracks on the rare level floor of the coal canyon. Two generations were born within its walls. My Ciocia Anna was born, lived, and died there. My dad told stories of boxcar hobos carving symbols on the garden gate of generous souls within during the Great Depression in his boyhood. When my Ciocia Dorota was hit by a car in front of that house at three years old, my Babcia Elsie, my personal hero, carried her with her pelvic and leg casts uphill to church every morning.
My Babcia Elsie moved from that house with her husband and two children into her own home which years later would share a backyard with my childhood home, making us everyday friends. She hummed when she walked, spoke a blend of Polish and English of her own devising, began her life as a seamstress at 14 in sweatshops, and often abruptly stopped whatever she was doing to impart some wisdom to me whether I understood it or not. She called me “Luancia Dear Heart and Gentle People”. “Never cry over one that won’t cry over you.” or “Luancia, did today you pray for me? God listens to little children but He’s tired of us old ones.” Or when rewarding me with a nickel she’d say, “Up to the church take and light a candle, give God thanks for all we have.”
Now, they are all long gone, fading memories and I am miles away from familiarity.
I emailed Rose, telling her how grateful and delighted I am with her thoughtful birthday gifts and telling her a brief history of the porcelain company. She wrote back. Rose's grandmother Zosia gave her two teacup sets years ago, one of them was now mine. My lovely cousin wanted me to share our family heirloom. They were Mary's, our Prababcia.
So, at the age of 61 in the pandemic year, I am given gifts, incredible gifts that humble me and speak to me of endurance, of continuity and grace. And the unspeakable language and timelessness of courageous hearts.