Vignette: Blue Glass

Blue glass plates, cups, bowls, and platters were spread and stacked across the table.  Depression glass.  Most of this is worthless, she thought.  I don't want it.  I have to keep it.

The glass arrived in four packing boxes yesterday, shipped from her mother's now empty house.  Depression glass was passed down in this family.  Each woman had her own color.  She collected some black amethyst glass items.  But her mother had cupboards of blue glass.  She had sold much of it.  But, here was the rest.  She'd wanted me to have it it, she remembered.  The handwritten note in the cupboard.  Another in a box under the stairs.

She cleared a cupboard and started stacking the platters and plates.  They seemed small and delicate.  They seemed good for an elderly lady, but she couldn't imagine her teenage sons holding them.  She climbed on a chair to place them high.  The sugar dish slipped from her hand and shattered on the concrete floor.  Blue Depression glass spread across the floor.