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Tea set, originally uploaded by sherina.

When I was still a fairly young teenager, I used to lurk around one of the china cabinets that my grandmother had in her house. I would open it up and run my finger along the cups and the pot in this tea set. I don’t even know if it belonged to her or her own mother, or if it was a set that had once belonged to one of her late sisters; whenever one of my great-aunts passed away, my grandmother would end up with a lot of their stuff because her house was so big that she was the only one who could store so much stuff. I wish I knew where this came from originally, I don’t know if she would even remember.

I do know it’s extremely fine china. Every time I pulled a cup out to hold, I was always a little afraid that it might break right in between my fingers or that I would accidentally drop it and it would smash to pieces on the floor. I couldn’t help it though, I loved this set so much that I kept having to touch it.

I always made it very well known that I wanted it. I told my grandmother that she could never ever sell it or give it away because I had dibs on it. She promised I could have it when I moved out. True to her word, not long after i first moved into an apartment, the tea set was bestowed upon me. For a long time it lived in carefully wrapped newspaper inside a cardboard box; as much as I loved it, I had nowhere to put it. Somehow, the cupboard that held regular drinking glasses didn’t seem like an appropriate showcase.

Years later, when my other grandmother passed away, my father asked if George and I wanted to take her dining set which included the table and chairs, a buffet, and a china cabinet. Because I am weirdly attached to furniture and other objects that belonged to my family I said yes. With the china cabinet now proudly standing guard over our living room, I had a place to put my beautiful tea set.

I still treat it the way that I did when I was 15 years old. I still peek at it through the glass doors and I still open the door so I can run my fingers along the slightly embossed pictures of the beautiful Asian women that grace the china. I have never once used a single piece of it. I’m still terrified that I’ll break it and that it would break my heart just as thoroughly.

I’ve been thinking about how silly that is though, to have something so incredibly beautiful, so precious to me, and to never use it. I’m sure that once upon a time, in an age where people still did afternoon tea with fancy cups and delicate cookies, people drank from this very set. I think that when I make myself a cup of tea tonight, I’ll use just one cup and one saucer. Even if I do break them, I’ll still have many others left, but at least I can say that I’ve actually enjoyed them instead of just looking at them like they’re in a museum.