We kept waiting for the right time to come, but somehow it didn’t. The day wasn’t quite special enough the occasion not quite as big as we thought it needed to be,

I set the delicate cup and saucer in her hand and she looked up at me, eyes bright.

“But I think we’ll do differently me and you. Maybe now is the perfect time to use the fanciest things. Because today is… today. And that’s enough.”

She runs to the backyard toward the hydrangeas. She felt the riotous stir of beauty- the sudden lifting of a moment. When she returns, we pull out a carton of milk, find some leftover cookies, and set out the rest of China. I’ve kept it in a drawer for 10 years (or 20). And then we dip into the finesses of a regular Tuesday afternoon. Just us, eyes shining elbow propped on the unadorned table that has mail stacked at one end, dust cloth on the other. But now, too: are a handful of hydrangeas. Now her great-aunts China with its pale bouquets and golden edge. And as it seems to go when you bring out the fine things, the day itself feels all the finer.

Maybe we hold off because we don’t want to mess up something, chip an edge and diminish the value. We want to honor what was passed down to us or purchased at a high cost or stored in glass -front cabinets of ancestors and dusted by years. Protecting beautiful things is not wrong, but if we never enjoy what was given to us – that which helps us to see the present moment as something worthy to behold – this would be a miss.

Let’s not bury treasures. Let’s open cabinets, share what we have, marvel, laugh, feast. Even if its store bought cookies and teacups of milk on a Tuesday for two.