Do you have?

When I was 13, I worked up the courage to ask Grama for the small stack of depression glass she had on a shelf in her storage room.  7 plates, all varying sizes, of monax American Sweetheart dishes.  Grama had purchased them in 1935, from the Hudson's Department store on Grand Avenue in downtown Detroit as a 25th anniversary present for her parents.  She was a young nurse, a year out of school and working at Henry Ford Hospital in the pediatric unit.  "I bought twelve place settings and all the serving pieces as their anniversary gift." She recalled.  "Mother loved them, but my dad thought the gift frivolous.  When Mother died in '43, I took them all since he didn't appreciate them."

My first recollection of those dishes was in the mid-seventies, when I was around 7.  Grama had them stored in a bureau drawer at the bottom of the basement stairs.  My dad's cousins Judy & Cathy had come by, and were looking at the pieces.  I don't remember if they bought them or Grama gave them to her nieces, but I knew their mother, Aunt Martha, also had a few of her mother's dishes (perhaps the sisters each bought part of the original set?) A few years later, my mother and grandmother returned to that drawer in the basement.  We were heading to Florida, and her sister wanted to purchase some of my grandmother's pieces.  I distinctly remember the oval serving tray coming out-and wanting it.  I was 9 years old.

Grama moved in 1983, and the few remaining dishes landed on the shelf in her storage room.  Judy & Cathy claimed a few more, until there were just 7 remaining.  Growing fearful she'd give the last few away, I asked her for them in 1984.  Gene Florence's Collector's Encyclopedia of Depression Glass was frequently checked out of the local library.  At 16, I drove myself to local antique stores, hunting for that elusive translucent white glass.  Widowed at 24, I impulsively bought pieces to give myself 10 place settings-not retail therapy per se, but rather a desire to have control over some area of my life.  Grama passed a month before I remarried in 1998.

At the time of my first wedding, I didn't register for china-instead, I had the clerk write I would like any pieces of monax American Sweetheart instead.  I received none (this was pre-eBay) but I have often thought there are others, like me, who would have preferred to receive Grama's dishes as her wedding dishes.  I have used my American a Sweetheart off and on in the past 18 years as my everyday ware or something special-it always connects me to my Grama, who used the same in her kitchen from 1943 until the early sixties.  They are more than dishes-they are memories.

Do you have Grama's dishes, too?  Tell me about them.