Writer’s ideas often hit home

Each month, I steal a moment and disappear with the latest issue of House and Garden magazine.

I don’t do it to get a minute alone with the photos of beautiful rooms and furnishings, although they are exquisite, or to read the articles and scan the advertisements. No, I hide with a magazine so I can take my time and savor what editor Dominique Browning has to say in her monthly “Welcome” column. How many magazines can boast that the editor’s column is as much a lure as the content?

In her books “Around the House and in the Garden,” and “Paths of Desire,” Browning explores the importance of home, and in her case, the garden, as the center of our emotional lives. She writes, beautifully, about the choices we make, in relationships as well as more prosaic decisions like buying a bed or a sofa, and how they reflect us as we really are.

In each book, she charts her course through a failed marriage, mothering two sons and a high-powered career, and the care and renovation of a 100-year-old house and garden, with her home as the North Star. As she shares pivotal moments in her own life, and the connection to the props of each drama – the old teak garden bench that was the scene of her first child’s first sentence, or the fractured crystal candlestick that mirrored the cleaving of her marriage – Browning vests inanimate objects with life.

In the latest (December 2004) issue of House and Garden, Browning opens her essay with these words: “The lucky ones know what it means to look up at a dreary cocktail party, drink melting in hand, napkin stuck to your nervous skin, and see across the crowded room one person who makes your heart trade places with your head. There he is, the True Love. The luckiest ones discover Ever After. The rest of us get to fall in love with things. “

Sometimes, we get both.

Often, we recognize the moment when something that is meant to be ours comes our way. But, sometimes, we can live with an object a long time before our eyes are opened to how much a part of us it has become.

In the mid-1980s my mother spied a set of Crown Staffordshire china, service for twelve, at an estate sale and declared it to be meant for me. She bought it and brought it with her when she visited.

Instead of packing the china in boxes, she added it to the other things in her suitcases, wrapping plates and cups and delicate soup bowls in her clothing, sandwiching fragile porcelain in folded jeans and shirts. (I wish I could say it was the craziest thing she ever did, but we’re only scratching the surface here.)

The suitcases were loaded, none too gently, into the belly of the plane, taken out and put into at least one other plane, and then tumbled down the luggage carousel before they finally arrived at my house.

I held my breath as we opened each case on the floor to find, incredibly, that nothing was broken, or even chipped.

I watched my mother bring out each piece – plain plates, ringed in gold, everything else ornamented with a deep blue-green and gold scroll pattern - until the floor around us was covered with china.

When I married, in 1980, I didn’t register for fine china. I knew better. My taste was too fluid to allow such a commitment. Selecting a pattern, and then asking others to give it to me, seemed too confining. Instead, I bought what I liked when I saw it. I wanted only what I fell in love with, not a match made by someone else.

So, when my mother produced that bounty of formal china, I admired it, declared it beautiful, and promptly put it into the china cabinet for safekeeping. It stayed safe for a long time. Each time I moved, the china was packed, unpacked and put on display again, but never used.

Finally, this year I decided that I’d grown tired of the static, department store, look of the dishes arranged in the glass-front cabinets.

Besides, in a house bursting at the seams with children, cats and dogs, the cabinets were a hazard. I moved them out of the dining room and offered the china to my sister.

For safekeeping, until I could have it all sent to her, I put mother’s gift in the cupboard with my collection of odds and ends china, the pieces I use frequently.

But, when it was time to set the table for our Thanksgiving meal this year, for the first time I pulled out the china my mother had given me. True to my nature, I didn’t use the complete set. But, instead, I mixed the simple ivory plates with a few favorite pieces of old brown and white transferware, and forest green pottery from the 1930s. I stood in the dining room and looked at the way the china my mother insisted I take fit, perfectly, with the pieces I had chosen for myself. I fell head over heels.

Obviously, I’m not a hard sell when it comes to falling for old things. I want to find romance, so I do. I’m willingly seduced by an object, fall in love and then, frequently, fall out again. I move on.

But every now and then, something comes along, a “true love” find, to borrow Browning’s words, which stays with me. Like the little cast iron bed - a garage sale discovery - that each of my children moved to when they left their crib, now put to use as a daybed in the room I claim as an office.

Or, the small oil painting of a rocky coastline I found in an antique store on Orcas Island - I can’t pass it without a lingering look, and a tug of longing for the shore.

Or, the antique christening gown I pulled out of a box of vintage clothing at an estate sale and which each of my children wore. (Prophetically, after my fourth baby was born, the gown, too, showed signs of not being strong enough to carry another child. She was the last to wear it.)

These are all things that seemed to place themselves in my path and demand my attention. I found them, and I cherish them.

But in the case of the dishes my mother carried across the country to me, it took a long time. It wasn’t until I brought them out of a frozen display, and into the air, and placed them on my table, that I really saw them at all.

I’ll write my sister and tell her I’ve changed my mind about making a gift of the china. She’s easygoing, and she’ll understand. But to ease the sting, I’ll do a little matchmaking for her.

I’m sending her a box filled with possibilities. Little gifts I happened upon and think are perfect for her.

Unlike my mother (I don’t have that kind of confidence, or luck) I’ll wrap each item in tissue and bubble wrap, and have them delivered.

I hope she finds a true love in there somewhere.