On Plates

In her first novel about amnesiac detective William Monk, Anne Perry describes scene after scene of complex formal dining among landed gentry, wherein everyone changes for dinner, and the women must be escorted into the dining room by a man. Shamefully, if not enough men were present, the women would have to walk in by themselves. In one particular scene, a gentrified but poor female visitor gazes at the linen, the silver cutlery, the side of mutton, and the empty conversation, as the invisible maids and footmen pass the food around. The protagonist looks down at her ornate china plate. Not knowing what safe subject to raise with her aristocratic hosts.

These descriptions make me think immediately – in a kind of BLINK reaction -- of my grandmother Stephanya Romanov standing triumphantly in her Southampton beach house and announcing “Soup’s on!” to me, my parents, and my grandfather.

You need to see the scene: my grandmother was about 4’’ 10” and she would be wearing a hand-me-up Snoopy sweatshirt that said TO DANCE IS TO LIVE (appropriate for an ex Ballet Russe dancer), and corduroy pants, that I think also may have been mine. She would be smiling her enormous smile --

After this announcement we would sit down to macaroni and cheese or hot dogs or hamburgers, or a truly weird chili-like concoction served on aqua colored Texasware plastic plates. It must be noted that my grandfather – who was the real Romanov (my grandmother being the descendent of some minor Russian aristocrat) – resisted this laissz-faire attitude somewhat. He typically wore a smoking jacket and a scarf stuck with a pearl pin to such meals. That was his idea of country-wear. And his George Harrison style Beatle wig. He was an artist, though, and could be eccentric.

I never entirely understood my grandmother’s fascination with the casual. My grandfather was a gifted dress designer and made all of my grandmother’s clothes. They lived in a Manhattan townhouse packed with chinoiserie, musical instruments, and books. They went to the opera and had sophisticated, artistic, bohemian (read, Gay and Lesbian) friends. They stayed out till all hours.

Yet, my grandmother lived for her Snoopy sweatshirt and pants, and walking her 3 dogs in the country. She loved her plastic plates. And she loved eating in the kitchen, where you could see wild swans in the distance honking in a pond across the road.

Reading Anne Perry, I think I get it. My grandmother was born in 1900. She must have known and attended the aristocratic dinners that Anne Perry describes. Her own mother was a feminist, a writer and a graduate of Wellesley. All that propriety. Formality. Not to mention corsetry. And of course, my grandmother’s mother couldn’t vote, and my grandmother watched her own mother opine at the table without a legal voice. It’s hard to remember that these freedoms for women are very recent.

So it makes sense that pea soup and mac and cheese would be glorious, and that a sweatshirt and a pair of pants would be pieces of clothing that would be fabulously, subversively comfortable, washable, easy to move in. Fun.

And plastic plates? Plates that were unbreakable, dishwasher safe, and equally important – something anyone could buy or afford. Not china. Not precious, and because of that, even more valued. Loved.

What are my favorite plates at home? And my husband’s? You know the answer. Those aqua colored Texasware plates that I inherited from my grandmother and brought out here to California.

Soup’s on, everyone!