Grumpa Joe's Place

This week as I helped clean the table after supper I placed my empty wine glass on the counter and then proceeded to knock it over. My first reaction was to step back and survey the floor for broken pieces. Next i went for the broom and dust pan. I know that when glass breaks and scatters it goes into mysterious places that don’t make any sense. I wound up sweeping the entire kitchen being careful to get under the cabinet skirts. I collected a small pile of chards and dumped them. Next, I did the same with the counter top. Again, there were glass chards in places where one does not usually look. when it was all over, it dawned on me that the glass that broke was over sixty years old. It belonged to a set my wife Barb and I received for our wedding. For years, we guarded the crystal set of wines, water, sherbets like they were sacred. eventually, after Barb died, I began to use the glasses every day. They were beautiful, pure thin glass without blemish, and had a unique hexagonal shaped stem. They rang with a harmonious chime when clinked with a knife or fork. The set remains partially intact as the dessert glasses and a few small wine goblets remain. What I have concluded is that I’ve been using the water glasses as my wine glass, the actual wine glass holds but a fraction of liquid as the water glass does. I liked the healthy amount of wine I drink using this glass.

Drinking from the crystal allowed me to swirl the wine and determine the hold time for the wine to recede, thus giving me some information as to the quality of the beverage. When I hold the glass to the light I see the clarity and richness of the color, and when I poke my nose to the rim, I can smell the scents of the fruit, the barrel, and flavors emitted. All of this was included with a flash back of Barb telling me to be careful handling the glass. Often, I am reminded of the times when we, as a young family, sat at the supper table and enjoyed a bit of wine using the crystal. One time in particular Barb adventurously poured a bit of wine into the crystal glasses for our toddler children, Steve was four and Jacque was three. Jacque clenched the hexagonal stem in her chubby little fist and not realizing what she was holding squeezed her hand tightly not to drop our precious glass. As soon as she raised the glass to toast with us, I noticed the round bottom of the stem stayed on the table. Without alarm I quietly grabbed her tiny arm and helped her guide the glass away from the table where a sharp edged stump of stem awaited her hand to return. Luckily, there was no blood shed, and there was no panic to stress the child, but number one of a set of eight crystal wine glasses was dead. On this day some fifty-three years later I carelessly killed number eight.

Filed under: Biography, family, Food, Memories, Warm and Fuzzy | Tagged: Crystal glass, Moments to Remember, Red Wine | Leave a comment »