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Through a glass
Nov. 3rd, 2019 11:25 pmI've run out of time to write something specific for today, so have a bit of a thing I wrote a while ago:
* * *
How much juice do I pour into a glass for the kids? It suddenly seems vitally important to know how full the glass should be. How full were the glasses when I was a child? Different glasses, different juices. It was different at other people’s houses, it always is. Our everyday drinks glasses were short and squat and satisfying to hold, saved-up-for with green shield stamps, but there were also the tall glasses for special occasions, what I now suspect would be called hi-ball tumblers, but then were just unspokenly for best, or for grown up drinks, not for apple juice but for lemonade. But for every glass, everyday glasses or best glasses, there was a place to which they would be filled, and more than that would be considered greedy unless you were using up the last bit of a carton and it would have been silly to put it back in, and less than that would be considered mean. And I suddenly don’t know where the right point is on my own glasses, the 1970s ones I bought for 50p each from the hardware shop that surely can’t survive much longer with its cardboard drawers full of screws. My glasses and cups and plates are all things I have acquired, not things I have grown up with and lived with, and I don’t know how they work. Will the kids think they haven’t got enough mango juice? Will they think they’ve got too much, and worry that they can’t finish it? Things have not yet found their place in my life. When I go back to my parents’ house I use the for best glasses, because I'm an adult now, or else I drink coffee in the little brown cups we never used to use at all; the squat everyday glasses look dishwasher-scoured and sad and I can’t remember where you’re supposed to fill them to, and it matters, it matters.
* * *
How much juice do I pour into a glass for the kids? It suddenly seems vitally important to know how full the glass should be. How full were the glasses when I was a child? Different glasses, different juices. It was different at other people’s houses, it always is. Our everyday drinks glasses were short and squat and satisfying to hold, saved-up-for with green shield stamps, but there were also the tall glasses for special occasions, what I now suspect would be called hi-ball tumblers, but then were just unspokenly for best, or for grown up drinks, not for apple juice but for lemonade. But for every glass, everyday glasses or best glasses, there was a place to which they would be filled, and more than that would be considered greedy unless you were using up the last bit of a carton and it would have been silly to put it back in, and less than that would be considered mean. And I suddenly don’t know where the right point is on my own glasses, the 1970s ones I bought for 50p each from the hardware shop that surely can’t survive much longer with its cardboard drawers full of screws. My glasses and cups and plates are all things I have acquired, not things I have grown up with and lived with, and I don’t know how they work. Will the kids think they haven’t got enough mango juice? Will they think they’ve got too much, and worry that they can’t finish it? Things have not yet found their place in my life. When I go back to my parents’ house I use the for best glasses, because I'm an adult now, or else I drink coffee in the little brown cups we never used to use at all; the squat everyday glasses look dishwasher-scoured and sad and I can’t remember where you’re supposed to fill them to, and it matters, it matters.
