I don’t trust matching plates either. Or bowls and platters. I look askance at expensive stemware. And vintage crystal (Waterford candlesticks) and depression glass collections, my grandmother’s serving dishes, etc. The list is long. Every January I think about these things. I shy away from emotional attachments to breakables since 4:31 A.M. January 17th, 1994,when my condo on Valleyheart Drive in Studio City, California, shook apart in the Northridge quake.
There was a particular soup tureen I loved. When I set it in the center of the table and ladled out soups and stews and gumbos into matching bowls, family and friends remarked on that beautiful piece. After the earthquake of 1994, only the ladle was left. That was the one and only thing I, myself, ever deliberately broke. Threw it against the wall after the quake and listened to it crash.
Most of the things I loved and lived with - yes loved is not too strong a word for a collector - broke, slivered, exploded, splintered, cracked, ripped, shook to pieces. Even the biggest things. Antique armoire? Like driftwood. Refrigerator? It danced all the way across the kitchen floor before falling over and spewing its contents.
After the house was red-tagged – meaning we were no longer allowed to enter because the ground continued to shift for days, after all the reports were filled out for FEMA, I bought a few things to begin again. A new set of dishes - Fiesta Ware in yellow. Matching salad bowls. A lamp. I can’t remember what all I shopped for immediately after the quake, but I’m sure it’s in storage, still.
Trying to replace glassware collections was a foolish move at the time, a reaction to the loss and not a real desire to own and preserve that stuff again. Soon I began to pass things along. I asked my daughter to take over all the family Christmas decorations and family photo boxes and a few keepsakes that remained. Much of what was salvaged has been in storage now for over a decade.
I don’t lean toward delicate things anymore. Or keepsakes. Or memorabilia. These days I’m drawn to rustic, sturdy furnishings. Eclectic would be a kind word for it. Pride of place at home, since that day in 1994, goes to the short and stubby (and surprisingly heavy) redwood bench used by a few strong men who freed my next door neighbor, Bridgett, who was trapped inide when our building shifted on its foundation and rendered her doors unusable.
My door opened a crack and when I crawled out they pulled that bench out of my house and used it to crash through her sliding glass doors. Bridgett fled southern California. The bench, now restored, moved north with me.
None of us will ever forget the exact sound of our homes shattering around us, while we were still inside. And we talk about exactly where we fell. When the movement knocked me off my feet, the place I landed was in front of a huge china storage area. Pieces of glass flew all over the house and all over me. I picked pieces of my beautiful antique stained-glass-colored wineglasses from my calves for weeks. Oh - there’s a fragment of the red one, there’s the green.
Once in a while glassware lust strikes again, but I am mostly able to resist. It’s easy to understand why. Even if the conscious mind wants us to move past this, the subconscious will forever waken us during thunderstorms, or when a truck rumbles by on a normally quiet street. And if one day, suddenly the sound of a train roars through the living room to waken us again and the floor moves so violently we can’t stand – if that happens again in my lifetime, I’ll know exactly what it is, and I will probably grab, before trying to escape, absolutely nothing.
© Anita Garner 2010