"The heart wants what the heart wants."

Honestly and truly. I am really trying to deaccession, not acquire. Honesty. Truly.

I'm 72. I. Do. Not. Need. More. Stuff. 

But sometimes I backslide.

For Easter, which I hosted for the first time, I bought a lovely serving bowl and platter. I wanted something springy. Something festive, but without bunnies or any other Eastery whatever on them. White and blue with a lemon pattern. On sale at Macy's. Big sale. Marked down from $50 each to $18 each.

How could I resist?

I didn't.

And I've already gotten my money's worth out of them, thank you. Mostly because they're sitting on my counter, out there in plain view every day. They're out in plain view because finding a place for them will require me to completely reorganize my cabinets. 

I've also gotten my six bucks worth of use out of the mini-bowl - white with lemons - that I got at Home Goods a few weeks ago. My daily quartered orange fits quite nicely in it. Citrus on citrus.

But I'm afraid that it's more than just serving pieces with lemons on them that's causing me to backslide.

There's a set of six aluminum tumblers from the Vermont Country Store that arrived the other day.

I need these like I need another hole in my head.

Nevertheless, I wanted them. And now I have them.

I've wanted them for ages. More than 60 years worth of ages.

Our family friend Joan had these in her house.

Joan lived across the street from my grandmother, where my family lived in a flat until I was six-and-a-half and we moved around the corner.

My mother stayed friends with Joan.

Joan was a widow. I vaguely remember her husband, Danny. I have an impressionistic picture of him in the street in front of their house. I think my father was talking with him. Had Danny just gotten back from the Korean War? In my memory, he died of polio, but I don't know if that's true.

Joan and Danny had two little boys, one a year older than my brother Tom, one a year younger. Brian and Johnny.

Joan was a flamboyant, chain-smoking redhead with gorgeous big blue eyes, but she and my mother - the antithesis of a chain-smoking redhead - were good friends. 

I was in and out of Joan's house all the time. 

When we were still living in my grandmother's house, my mother had my brother Rick. A premie, he arrived a month early, just before my sixth birthday. He came home from the hospital on my birthday, but my mother had better things to do with her time than bake me a birthday cake. Joan made cupcakes and sent them over. Yellow cake, each frosted in a different, lurid color. She was far more liberal with the food coloring than my mother ever would have been. I can still remember how good it felt to bite into one of those cupcake. Even though they weren't chocolate, they were delish. 

What a day! Getting a new baby brother and a crazy-color cupcake. Did I ever thank Joan? Of course not. 

Although I still have an olfactory memory of her house, I can't quite describe what it was. Lots of smoke in it. Maybe Joan's perfume, too? I loved that smell, and it's one of the few homes in my memory that had a distinct odor. The other great one: My grandmother Rogers front hall (furniture polish), and her back hall (boiled potatoes and sour milk). 

Anyway, I loved the smell of Joan's house. And I loved the fact that, when she gave us water to drink, it was in a jewel-toned aluminum tumbler. 

Nothing tasted better on a blazing hot summer day than ice-cold water from a jewel-toned aluminum tumbler, served in Joan's kitchen.

I loved those tumblers, and I loved Joan, too.

She had a car - my mother didn't drive - and every once in a while in the summer, we'd all jump in her car and drive up Route 9 to some lake or another and go for a dip, and - if we were lucky - have an ice cream cone. 

Joan drove that rackety old two-toned (dark green top, mint green bottom) like a maniac. This was before seat belts. Wheeeee. One time, we almost hit a cow. (Long story.)

In retrospect, Joan did a lot of things like a maniac. She was a manic talker and, as time went on (even into my adulthood), she frequently showed up on my mother's doorstep when she was having some sort of crisis. Joan had remarried - a very nice guy from the neighborhood named Pudgie - but she struggled with mental health. Back then, we didn't have the awareness of or language for mental illness. At least not in my neighborhood. But we knew that Joan was nutty. Sometimes overwhelmingly so.

Sometimes my mother would grumble a bit that, as time went on, Joan only dropped by to see her when Joan was in crisis. I'm sure Joan felt that she could lean on my mother's shoulder - my mother was a few years older than Joan, a strong, unflappable, steady presence - when she needed a shoulder to lean on. 

The last time I saw Joan was at my mother's wake in 2001. Joan herself died in 2011. (I didn't remember. I just looked it up.) Pudgie had died a couple of years after my mother. 

Joan hadn't lived across from my grandmother's house in years. After she married Pudgie, they moved into his house a couple of blocks away. But she and my mother remained friends.

Over the years, I rarely saw Joan. My mother would let me know how Joan and Pudgie were doing. Again, Joan pretty much only wanted to see my mother when she was in some sort of crisis.

For me, Joan is forever associated with those aluminum tumblers. 

And I have wanted them for decades.

A while back, I bought a couple at a flea market, but they were pretty beaten up, the colors dulled. I never used them.

I kept seeing the set of six in the Vermont Country Store catalog. And I kept passing them by. What do I need with six aluminum tumblers? Nothing!

And yet. 

As Emily Dickinson told us, "The heart wants what the heart wants." And this heart has wanted a set of aluminum tumblers for more than 60 years.

I will start drinking my ice cold water out of the light blue one. I can use the turquoise one as a vase in the kitchen. At Christmas, maybe I'll take the red, green, and gold tumblers and put holly in them. 

And whenever I use one, I will think of Joan.

Thank you, Joan, from the bottom of my heart.