Polishing the Family's History
The life of these silver plates.
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I can’t remember the last time I polished the silver plates. They come out of the china closet only on holidays and for special family gatherings, then I put them right back after a brief wipe. It’s enough that you can see your distorted reflection shimmering on their surface.
My husband’s parents purchased 16 plates and wine goblets in Acapulco in the early 1950s. They had been married for only a few years and left my husband behind in the care of his aunt. They may have seen the trip as a second honeymoon and buying the silver plates and goblets as a wedding present to themselves. My husband was around two at the time. This would make the plates close to seventy years old.
Each plate is engraved with a fancy F for my husband’s family name. You would be completely off base if you thought the engraving was a signature of generational wealth. His dad was born in the small industrial town of Butler, PA, into a family who never owned plated silverware let alone fine Mexican silver. But by the time of their Acapulco trip, my father-in-law had become a very successful disk jockey at a major Cleveland rock and roll station. His job brought him money, prestige, and a taste for life’s fineries. My mother-in-law’s family was upper-middle class and she might have seen the plates and goblets as lending sophistication to their frequent entertaining. When my father-in-law was caught up in the era’s payola scandal a few years later, the plates and the goblets became a reminder of past glory.
This is where the silver’s history begins to morph: My husband’s parents divorced sixteen years after the silver was purchased. His mom happily relinquished the plates engraved with her ex-husband’s initial. She kept the goblets. His dad went on to marry two more times, and it’s likely the plates graced his wives tables. But he was the one who polished the plates each time they were used. Even after his final divorce when the plates remained in a china closet, he often polished them while watching Sunday football games. He tried every polish brand on the market until he settled on the superior effectiveness of Goddard’s silver polish dip.
Two decades later, my husband’s mom died and her possessions were divided between my husband and his unmarried brothers. The youngest brother claimed the goblets. His brothers guessed that his request was a way to hold on to their mom and remember the happy years. When their dad died, my husband and he split the silver plates evenly between them. I wasn’t keen to have even the eight plates, having come from a family that would consider them too showy. I eventually grew to appreciate their beauty whenever I set them out for dinner parties and the family’s special meals.
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The history of the silver took another turn at Christmas dinner this year. My husband’s brothers had traveled far to join us so the table required eight place settings. First came the silver plates and then the dishes my mother-in-law bought for our wedding. They were not the fine porcelain she assumed I would pick and was appalled at the sturdy dishes with a charming design I ordered. Their main flaw, though, was their large size that hid the silver plate underneath. I came to understand her complaint several years ago when I purchased five porcelain dinner plates in a thrift store. They nestle in the middle of the silver plates, their dainty size offset by a polished ring of metal. I don’t use them often because their fragile petiteness won’t hold enough food for the family’s robust men.
Christmas dinner was announced. We took our seats at the table and the meal proceeded very boisterously with many overlapping conversations. Somehow I picked up what my two sons were discussing at the far end of the table.
The oldest said to his brother, “We’ll each take four.”
“Four what?” I asked.
“These,” he said, holding up his silver plate.
Everyone else stopped talking.
“Why would you split them up like that?” I said, a little alarmed. What would they do about the people at their tables without a silver plate!
“They’re one of the few things that make us look fancy!”
His grandfather would be proud.
“You want the ones I have?” my husband’s youngest brother asked me across the table. “They’re just sitting in the box. Also the goblets.”
I looked at my husband for input. The damn silver is his family’s complicated history, for God’s sakes. I have my own family’s history to wrestle with and I often lose. All my husband offered was a bemused head shake at his youngest brother’s sudden change of heart.
“Sure,” I said.
And with that the table moved on to more pressing matters of the heart, namely dessert.
Late at night, I started wiping the plates and began to notice small black marks across their surfaces, along with dirt and wax drips in their rims. The F could barely be seen in the middle.
The next morning, my husband’s other brother came into the kitchen and found me rubbing one of the plates with silver cream from the half-filled pot I found beneath the sink.
He stood beside the coffee maker watching for awhile, then said. “Guess he’s finally moved on.”
“Do you want them?”
“Hell no. Don’t you want them?”
My husband and I have been married now longer than his parents. Our sons consider the plates with their F flourish to be part of their history. The members of their families will see their faces shining on the plates.
“Yeah, sure, we’ll take them,” I said, hoping the plates won’t need polishing.
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And, one more thing, please
I’ll leave you with this portrait of Suzanne Valadon, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s lover. I feel quite a kinship with her as we start 2026. I don’t know about you but I’ve begun to mull over increasing my wine order to steady my nerves over what is already a very perturbing year!
I have written many times about family heirlooms and the unusual items that people treasure and what they mean to the family. The key bit of EVERY family heirloom is knowing its story of who it belonged to and where it came from and those silver plates and goblets will forever live on in your families memory!
Strange lately I have been thinking about my own treasured possessions and if my own children would like to keep them going through the generations or would they sell them thinking of them as just space waster. Since I have boys I think the sentimental meaning may be lost on them. I do have many nieces whom might appreciate the gesture more, but it’s a dilemma for me touched by both guilt (omitting my sons) or perhaps uncertainty. Hopefully I will have time left to decide. Thank you for yet another interesting historical personal story. Love learning so much from your writings.