A Candy Dish That Holds A Piece Of My Heart
May is my favorite time of year, a month full of new life. I gave birth in the month of May and yet my mom died in May. I inherited a Mayfair pattern Depression Glass candy dish from my mother which had also been her mother’s.
The candy dish is a deep turquoise blue color, a less common color in this type of glass. It’s beautiful to me and it sits on a shelf where I can see it daily. It’s always been “shelved” in all of our homes but in our new home, it’s on a kitchen shelf where I make some of my late mom’s recipes. I smile at this as she really wasn’t a fabulous cook but she could follow a good recipe. I’ve done the same with some of hers.
Depression Glass was made in the 1920’s to 1940’s to bring some hope and brightness during those hard economic times. A history of Depression Glass article revealed that it was “pretty glass that brought families together during the Depression Era.” Tables were set daily with Depression Glass. It was inexpensive and sturdy, yet, dainty and feminine. The Hocking Glass Co. made the monochromatic colors to be appealing to women and entice them to help the country.
Women were viewed as dainty then, too, but in the late 1920’s, women earned the right to vote after many years of fighting for it. My own mother was pretty and a strong woman. I didn’t realize how strong until I was an adult woman and it was difficult at times to be her daughter because she was a strict taskmaster. She had lost her own mother when she was only four years old. My mother went to live in an orphanage for two years as a pre-teen with her handicapped sister. Her father was diabetic in an era of no insulin and he was too sick to care for them for those two years. Her father was able to care for them for the next four years but tragically had a heart attack when sitting at the kitchen table across from my mother. My mother was only seventeen years old. That shattered her life but she went to live with her aunt and uncle, loving cousins and an unmarried aunt. Her sister, my Aunt Rita, went to live in a hospital as she couldn’t care for herself. Her “maiden aunt” as was said, lived with her cousins, too. She was a favorite of my mom’s and she had been active in the local Suffrage Movement. She shared stories of her activism with my mother.
It's only an object of little economic value but my Depression Glass candy dish has been a brightness to me during this pandemic. Depression Glass was strong glass and yet feminine and it’s still passed down in families and collectible today. My Depression Glass candy dish is a reminder that while life is fragile and can threaten to shatter us, we don’t always break, making us stronger as my mother was and also the women who were in fighting for Suffrage at the time in history. I will survive just as the sturdy women did before me.