Another Christmas Memory

  Christmas at the Little Bayou House is often compared to a "trip down memory lane" by a lot of visitors.  That could be a good thing or, as I wonder, if perhaps it is a referral to my tendency to hold on to things.  I do, indeed, find it difficult to toss items that have any bit of sentimental ties.  Maybe because these items remind me of back home on the farm or family members, I have a terrible time deciding what to discard....so I keep them all.  So far, this has not come to the point that it is creating a problem since I only seem to hang on to vintage things.  Modern stuff can come and go without a blink of an eye. I have even been known to give away a perfectly good "modern" appliance if it means I can hang onto some antique utensil that performs the same task.  In my defense there, I figure that those electric thingamajigs won't be much needed if we have a power failure.  At least with my hand powered things, I won't be "caught in the dark", so to speak.  Sometimes, I think our grandparents were a lot smarter than we are today.

  My Christmas Memory for today came in the form of a mug and saucer. This vintage set always sat in Grandmother's built in china cabinet.  It was one of my first memories of that cabinet.  I remember seeing that beautiful pottery piece through the glass doors and thinking how much it reminded me of Christmas.  Perhaps the colors of red and green lent themselves to the holidays but that is not why I connected it with that special day.  Grandmother always brought the mug and saucer out for my dad when we would visit on Christmas.  She would make the comment that "Since Darius is such a big man, he needs a big cup!" Pop was well over six feet tall and the mug held well over a cup.  The sizes matched rather delightfully. Pop enjoyed his special cup and the special treatment from his mother-in-law.  

  Today, I brought the mug and saucer out of the china cabinet.  It would join in our holiday festivities even if it just sits on the table.  I told Mark the mug's story and he made the remark "Pop sure was a big man."  I took that to mean more than my dad was tall.  He was a big man...in so many ways.  Boy, I miss Pop.