The China Hutch

My granddad made a china hutch for my mother. I don’t know how old she was when he gave it to her, but she was probably no more than six years old.

A six year old that needed a china hutch…

If you know my mother it doesn’t surprise you that even as young as she was, she needed a place to house her china. It was an elaborate place setting. She had serving trays to go along with her cups and saucers, tea pot and sugar bowl. Each dish had a wide, pale pink stripe and there were flowers on the stripes. (I think they were blue flowers.)

I can imagine her perfectly, pouring her tea for her Madeline doll, her manners impeccable, never breaking a single dish. She was a girl’s girl.

Let’s fast forward twenty years and go back to that playroom I told you about. It housed several toys, along with her china hutch. Yes, it was handed down to her daughters in mint condition and I know she was so excited to share it.

I’m sure she imagined us loving it as much as she had, taking care of all of our tea sets (ours were plastic because I couldn’t be trusted with breakable objects), and enjoying many hours of pouring and polite conversation with dolls that didn’t talk back.

No such luck…

I know exactly what I used the hutch for and it certainly wasn’t for setting up dishes with flowers on them!

When your mother tells you to go clean up the playroom, I found that the hutch came in REALLY handy. It had two shelves enclosed by double doors and, how convenient, you could shove all the toys in there! Cleaning up was a breeze!

And Maria thought I was a genius, so she was shoving toys inside with me.

So, when Mom checked on us and saw a clean playroom and she asked if we were finished and if all the toys were in the right place… I said, “Yep!”.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was my first lie.