my holy grails

I am drinking a cup of coffee in the hopes of resuscitating my energy to do some more packing tonight. The dining room table is covered with my glassware collection, and has been for a week. If you haven’t had the pleasure of feasting with me, you might not know I have a thing for stemware. Doesn’t have to match or be worth anything… just look interesting and pretty. I also have a tendency to acquire glassware (with or without stems – though often with a beer logo) after spending a memorable evening out with friends. So… this collection is rather a difficult one to purge.

There is a wine glass from a wedding reception left behind at Higgins. A glass from which I drank my pint of Grolsch at a football club Christmas party in London. A fancy beer glass that entered my collection after an impish dare and night of cajoling at Uno’s. My annual souvenir from Banned in Boston. Random pairs that delighted the rods and cones of my eyes at Pier 1 or Crate & Barrel. The simple goblets I clasped in my hand whilst typing 250,000 words of my novel and then deleting them. They all barely fit onto the designated shelves of the kitchen and built-in, but as I look to put them in boxes I realize… some have to go.

I really don’t need a token of a Tower Hill wedding. It’s lovely, but my memories of that work experience are most definitely not. I’m not sure I need to hold onto a glass connected to a conversation with a guy whose attentions are long gone with the wind. I don’t need the pretty blue IKEA goblet I may have used three times since purchasing. The purchase is a happy detail I like to look at in the fuzzy cloud of memories and spontaneously smile. And yet… magnetized to that memory is the less happy variety… rather in the club of Tower Hill and transient conversationalists. 

So into the box of I am going to give it away to some place I don’t know yet, those glasses will go. I will, however, hold onto London and the pretty green and the ones that are used to resting on the coasters of my desk. 

But… enough pontificating. I need to find some newspaper and tissue. If you are, however, in need of glasses, let me know.