Treasure from the consignment store.

My mother sometimes frets about her attic.  Some of my grandmother’s stuff was stored up there after she died and sometimes my mother frets about the mess overhead.

I can understand that.  I can get worked up to a decent fret once in a while, too.

The Mission, which I chose to accept one evening in December, was to find the box of china that was to be given to my daughter, who is getting married in June.  This wasn’t my grandmother’s china, but my late aunt’s china.  My aunt and my daughter share the same name and it seemed logical they would share the same china.

“Going up in the attic” requires a ladder, a flashlight, a mask (if you can find one) and gloves.  Not a lot of stuff is up there.  It’s mostly old suitcases, boxes of mouse-eaten high school clothes (including some indecently short what-was-I-thinking skirts) and old (not in a good way) Christmas ornaments.

My attitude was:  bring anything that looked good down to the second floor and then sort through it.  I brought giant black garbage bags in which to toss the yucky, unwanted stuff.  My daughter waited at the bottom of the ladder as I popped the door to the crawl space and lifted myself into the darkness.  My mother, bless her heart, fretted that I would hurt myself.

I quickly found the china and several other mysterious-looking boxes.  I pawed through boxes of Christmas junk until I found the manger and its occupants that I’d loved rearranging when I was a child.  I dropped smelly boxes into the waiting arms of my daughter until (a) there didn’t look like anything else interesting to check out, (b) I was hot and (c) my mother seemed ready to have a nervous breakdown.

The fun part came while unpacking the boxes:  my daughter loved the china, the box of my grandmother’s costume jewelry my son had saved (no one knows why) was intact, the manger and the Wise Men and the paper mache baby Jesus had been ignored by the local mice, and we discovered six glass water goblets (Fostoria American, I would learn on ebay) that no one wanted but me.

One of Grandma's water goblets

But I needed eight Fostoria American water goblets for a Scotch-tasting dinner we would be hosting in a few weeks.  Ebay was the place to find them, but the cost of the shipping was more than the cost of the goblets, so I was determined to hunt them down them locally.

That didn’t quite work out.  Water goblets don’t grow on trees.  In fact, I think anyone who ever owned fancy water goblets sold them on ebay in 2001.

I’d have to find a couple of fillers.

Fortunately–or unfortunately, if you are my husband–the day I bought the trifle dish I also found a set of six water goblets that were just the right height. Pretty, too.

I had to buy all six, but the cost was cheaper than a Grandma Goblet, even without the shipping.

The next time I have 12 people over for dinner, no one will go thirsty.