the stacks

A few weeks ago, I walked into an antique store. Towards the back, on a dusty shelf, sat a tall stack of plastic plates in every shade I could think of. They caught my eye from the window as I walked from the parking lot. There was something familiar about them; their size and shape.

Downstairs in Dad's workroom is an old kitchen bowl, covered in paint. There are so many layers, it's nearly impossible to tell the original color of the bowl. It smells and feels of paint and leaves a bit of paint on your hands if you touch the inside.

* * *

In the red brick house, in a small dining area off of the kitchen, beneath the quilt with the big red diamond, we used to eat dinner on plates of primary hue. I liked the sound that the silverware made against them and how they felt against my hands when they came out of the dishwasher, the heat slowly escaping from the center as I stacked them neatly in the cupboard. I liked to stack them in order: red, yellow, blue, a color theory lesson on the kitchen shelf. Sometimes, if someone else had unloaded the dishwasher, and no one was looking, I would rearrange them, unstacking two blues or two yellows. Over the years we dropped a plate or two. The reds seemed to disappear the fastest. Maybe because they were our favorite; the one's we used the most. Slowly, the stack went from red, yellow, and blue, to just yellow and blue. I felt OK about it, though; like it was some sort of homage to our Swedish heritage. Once, a babysitter put a blue plate in the toaster oven to cook some hamburger. The smoke alarm went off and the plate came out with a big black hole in the center. We had to throw that one out. The hamburger went with it.

Aunt Judy gave Mom a set of cherry-bordered plates one year for her birthday. They soon occupied the place on the shelf where our beloved primary-colored plates once sat, stacked. When my sister left for college, Mom pulled down a small stack of plates and bowls for her to take. Now, years later, she and her husband eat soup and cereal in blue and yellow bowls.

* * *
I took a red plate off the shelf and turned it over, looking for the brand name on the back. My fingers traced over the "H." The store owner approached me. "Those are collector's items, you know." I nodded my head, finger moving from "H" to "E." I told him about the red brick house. About the babysitter, the hamburger and my sister who still has a few bowls -- blue and yellow. He pulled a green bowl off the shelf. I'd never seen one in green. It was nestled between a pink bowl and a red one. He left me to browse, both bowls and memories. I separated out all the red, yellow and blue plates and bowls. I left them stacked separately from the others, a lesson in color theory on the shelves of an antique store, just a few miles from the red brick house.