It’s surprisingly difficult and dirty work. But it’s also a privilege and an honor to have so much that needs polishing. A few pieces are thrift store finds, but most are hundred-and-fifty-year-old family heirlooms that found their way in to my grateful hands. I take the responsibility seriously.
I was 12 when my only living grandmother died. She was the authority on all things Southern. And of grammar and life. No patent leather shoes after 5, streak your hair, pierce your ears, and do not wear white after Labor Day—a rule that’s taken me twenty-two years to finally break (and only to feel slightly guilty about… slightly).
After she passed I learned that in her Anne George way, she left a list of very specific personal items that were intended for each of her bereaved. I was to receive her diamond earrings and the silver collection. Until then, I had not paid much attention to the silver. It was just the decor in the dining room and little ornaments around her home. It wasn’t gawked over, rarely discussed, and of course the children’s table was not privy to the sterling flatware at Christmas. Why would she leave it to me? I understood the earrings. Much to her annoyance, my ears had not been pierced, and I knew she left them to me as one final nudge. I hear her approval every time I wear them. Anne didn’t do anything without calculations and poetry. This silver must be important.
I didn’t lay eyes on the collection again until my twenties. Only worthy to receive it when I had my own home and a betrothed. I only had vague memories of what was in it, but The Silver that was destined for me fascinated me for years. The women who owned it did too. As I decorated my college homes, I kept stumbling upon pieces tarnished and haphazardly tossed into boxes on the floors of thrift stores, waiting to be rescued by someone who knew better. Who is giving this away!? These women fascinated me too.
My mother didn’t keep much silver around, except for maybe on the specialist of occasions. It was kept in closets and hutches, away from prying eyes and children. And even now, she chooses to pull out her festive stainless flatware—a wedding gift—instead of her silver-plate for holiday dinners. She says it’s prettier and I agree. Also less of a pain to clean.
The modern woman. Tucking grandmother’s china, silver, and crystal away in favor of durability and the dishwasher. A generation waiting for their daughters to be old enough to pass off the sideboard worth of china tea cups. Little did they know we would welcome it and create our own movement of Grandmillennials buried in estate sale china. Though we still strongly favor our dishwashers, there is special therapy about the delicate task of cleaning and polishing silver. For me, almost religious. The Wrights Silver Polish completes the connection to the generations of women before me. As my hands gently rub the tarnish off the fork my great-grandmother held a hundred years ago—the same one that my grandmother washed and placed back in its velvet box the day after every Christmas for forty years—I feel the satisfaction of the legacy all southern women hope for: that traditions hold steady. That our names and possessions will trickle down to our granddaughters. It threads us together.
But this particular collection of silver is so much more than the trays given as wedding gifts, my great-grandmother’s serve-ware, or even my great-great-grandmother’s tea set. This collection contains the legacy of a writer and wildly successful debate team coach. Silver bowls and champagne buckets are engraved with “Literacy Award” and “Debate Team Champion,” and my favorite Grande Baroque tray is engraved “Alumna of the Year” — a gift presented by the President of Samford University on a hot October Saturday during a fifty-yard line ceremony that I was lucky enough to attend.
So I display them proudly on my walls and hutches. I put it to work and use it frequently. That’s what it’s for, and what certainly what those old women would have done. The small bowls are scattered about as candy dishes, the larger ones hold cheese straws and flowers arrangements. I even had my wedding flowers arranged in the champagne bucket that now grows paper whites at Christmas. And my sterling flatware comes out on every celebratory occasion. Its “Rose Point” by Wallace, by the way. And you better believe that I announce it with gusto when someone asks for my silver pattern.
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