by Linda Ann Nickerson

Created on: March 06, 2008   Last Updated: March 08, 2008

UNTOUCHED ITEMS

My grandmother lived in a porcelain house. Everything was fine and fragile.

On Sundays, dressed in our finest attire, we would pile into the family station wagon after church to attend a fancy dinner at Gram's house.

My father would park the car in the street, just to one side of the front walk. Years later, I learned that Gram had instructed him not to park in her driveway, in case the car might drip oil on her pavement.

The entire family would parade to the porch and ring the bell. Melinda would answer, dressed in a freshly ironed white bibbed apron. Cheerily, she would dispense hugs all around before helping us to hang our coats in the front closet of the two-story brick colonial.

Often, our cousins would be there as well. The adults would gather on tufted settees in the living room, while the children would assemble in the glassed sunroom. There, among ferns and ficus trees, we would play board games and cards.

HANDS OFF!

We were allowed to touch nothing. Actually, that's not exactly true. Gram had one old wooden chest, tucked in a corner of her unused guest room, which contained a few antique toys. A wooden horse, a faded rag doll, a bag of marbles and a ceramic tea set were free for the playing.

After a while, Melinda would ring a little brass bell and summon everyone to the dining room. We would stand behind our assigned chairs, while my father or my uncle Jack would say the family blessing.

We would take our seats, and Melinda would serve a multi-course meal on Gram's fine bone china. Breaded pork chops, chicken cutlets, pot roast and leg of lamb were her specialties. We ate with etiquette, looking forward eagerly to her dessert surprises. Bread pudding, red velvet cake, flourless chocolate torte and supreme cookies tantalized us each week.

Finally, after the last morsel had been consumed from each plate, we might be excused from the table. Every week, someone would offer to help clear the table, but Gram would refuse the offering.

"Melinda is the only person I will trust with my special rosebud china," she would say. So we would slip away from the dining room to resume our quiet games.

Again, Gram would remind someone to be walk softly past her imported grandfather clock or not to touch her beloved Hummel figurines.

By mid-afternoon, our parents would collect us to don our coats and return home.

TREASURED COMPANY

My grandmother lived past 100. In fact, she died just two weeks shy of her 102nd birthday, while sitting in her favorite brocade chair in her own home.

For several years, as Gram's health faded, a series of in-home care professionals had tended to her daily personal needs. She had received her meals on a mosaic-inlaid TV tray in the den of her antique-laden abode. Using a walker, she had managed to shuffle from her bedroom to the bathroom and den, with the assistance of these hired attendants. In her final years, she rarely ventured into the dining room, den or kitchen.

After she died, when the time came to sort through her belongings, the family received a surprise. The shock would have killed Gram, if she had still been alive. (Of course, in that case, we would not have been allowed to sort through her stuff.)

Only one place setting remained of all of Gram's silverware, glassware, linens and even her treasured rosebud china. The Hummels were gone, along with several original oil paintings and antique furnishings.

Over the years, someone had robbed her blind, although she had no idea!

Ironically, the items we had never been allowed to touch were probably fenced on some street corner or sold in a dusty flea market somewhere.

If Gram only knew!

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