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I couldn’t make this picture not come out fuzzy, go figure.

This is a teacup, German-made china. Note the lack of a saucer, and the bit-up edge on one side. This is a cup my grandmother managed to bring with her on the boat from Germany to Canada in 1950 after my grandfather got back from the POW camp in Africa. My mother remembers that my grandmother was always drinking tea from it, minus any saucer, because she didn’t have a saucer for it. It is what remains of a set my grandmother had in Germany, and my mother doesn’t remember any other piece from it coming with it.

My grandmother had 5 children, including a set of twins (my mother and her brother); it’s not hard to imagine that this was her last remaining piece of a beloved set, the rest broken either by the constant moves (from Latvia to Poland to Germany, and then to Canada) that the war demanded, or by her boisterous children desperate for a place to play and romp around. My mother tells me that, before the family left Germany, they were living in two rooms offered to them by a German family; my grandmother, her mother and father, her cousin and her two children, all crammed into two borrowed rooms. The children were constantly being shushed because my grandmother didn’t want to disturb their generous hosts. This cup was what my grandmother held in her hands to calm herself during that horribly stressful time.

When my mother got married she found another tea cup like it in Toronto, with an actual saucer; she bought a cup and two saucers and sent them back to British Columbia as a gift for her mother. When my grandmother died, my mother brought both tea cups back home with her. The other tea cup matches this one, but you can still tell that this is the original one.

As a gift, my mother bought me a set of dishes just before I moved to Mississauga, in this pattern. I love them.