Okay so this is my first post on this site so don't be too mean....Please ...
The cup sat unobtrusively in the center of the kitchen shelf and to the naked eye, besides being slightly battered, it seemed to be an ordinary cup. And yet to anyone within the Wolfe family it was an icon of matriarchal superiority. Handed down from one generation of disappointed housewives to the next it was, I am ashamed to say, our version of a treasured heirloom. Whenever a female relative entered the house it was greeted with revered choruses of
“Whisha isn’t it great to see a bit of tradition still alive today”.
Somehow I didn’t agree.
I could never understand this how this thing could be classed as a heirloom as I had been well informed ( from various cartoon strips and t.v.) that a heirloom was usually an item of material value like an 18th century broach or the like . This mug defied this definition completely. From the few areas where it retained its original color it was a rotten tomato red. In my innocent 7 year old mind it resembled a toadstool swimming in a sea of teracotta muck. It handle which I guessed had once been a semicircle was now a sharp stump ready to maul any poor, innocent child’s curiosity. But the crème de la crème remained underneath the sharp, fluky brim. Its “delicate nature” prevented my houseproud mother from ever washing the damn thing and so it had developed a thick white flowery skum inside it . Heirloom or not I still hated it with a passion and it was only a matter of time before disaster struck…[pre][/pre]
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