My Grandmother’s China Set

My grandmother’s name was Golda. When she immigrated to Israel, it was Hebrewitized to Zehava (gold in Hebrew). She immigrated from Lithuania with her mother and one of her sisters. The rest of her family either stayed behind or immigrated to the USA. In her thirtieth year she became a widow without a profession, with two school age children, in a country with an uncertain future. She was poor for many years and frugal for many more. She bought subsidized day-old bread all her life.

She knew I loved her Japanese-scenery china set. It was so delicate that if you pressed your finger inside a tea cup, you could see the silhouette on the other side. It had a blue cherry blossom design. We never used it. It was placed in a high built-in cabinet in her tiny kitchen. Her kitchen was sparse and spotless, no other frilly girly items to spot. I think by age nine or ten, I had already made her promise that she would pass the china set to me. I have it now. A few years ago most of them broke after one wrong move while cleaning a shelf. I was so broken by it. I kept every piece but could not bring myself to use these pieces. They were not meant to be broken. They came all the way from Japan to Lithuania, from Lithuania to Israel, and from Israel to the USA. I never used them for their intended function either. A mistake. Now I am recapturing their beauty by making them part of a mosaic tray.