A set of crystal wine glasses watches my younger self eat cereal, vacuum the carpet, finish my homework, and twirl my fork at family dinners. They watch winters melt into springs and twilights drip into mornings. They see my body arch and bend, crooking from childhood into adulthood. They belong to my mother. When she dies, they will belong to me.
Omniscient and imposing, they reign over our dining room, perched inside a maple cabinet. My mother tells me she is afraid to open this cabinet, fearing that the smallest touch or glance will cause these wine glasses to break. They are brilliant, soft, and clear. Crystal glass is distinguished by its ability to be crafted into thin sheets, folded and spun into delicate tableware that can refract light into rainbows. The set of four wine glasses inside my family’s sideboard is particularly delicate. The glass is fingernail thin and impossibly shaped—sloping from an airy, wide neck to a layered stem, to a pooling base. Flowering and fruiting vines are etched into the glass’ body. The floral designs circle the widest section of the wine glass, connecting to form a looping leafy crown. These crystal glasses are not to be touched and never to be used. They are heirlooms.
In a time when women could not open their own bank accounts, my grandmother bought the wine glasses with savings acquired from a weekly allowance she received from her husband. Though my grandmother loved elegant things, she did not have many—the money her husband made was enough to be practical, not indulgent. When she bought a set of four crystal wine glasses, it was an extravagance. The purchase was something private, a beauty just for her, as she gave her time to dusting and diapers, laundry and dinners.
Her early death endowed them with significance and beauty. They became artifactual, a physical remnant of my grandmother. The family split up the set of four glasses, amidst negotiation of paintings, place mats, pepper shakers and pearl earrings. Three went to the oldest boy. Only one to the youngest girl, my mom.
Without emotional weight, an heirloom is an old and impractical object. It takes up space. Dust settles on its shoulders. It’s bickered over and written down into wills as its previous owner decomposes. Even so, it becomes a twinkling ghost brought out on special occasions, touched with story, memory, and gentle fingers. My grandmother’s crystal intrigued me as a child because it was never taken out of the cabinet. I wondered why this glass was so protected and revered by my mom.
I learned that before the crystal glasses belonged to my grandmother, they belonged to their maker in the shop where they were heated, spun, carved, packaged and sold. In 1914, a Czechoslovakian immigrant established a workshop and store in Seattle, Washington: Kusak Cut Glass Works. His story is familiar: his artistry and work ethic pulled him from poverty, through Ellis Island, and into prosperity in the United States. He taught the crystal trade to his son, Tony Kusak, who inherited the business and crafted the glasses my grandmother bought.
For my grandmother, buying the wine glasses was an act of independence. An object to be appreciated when sunlight struck the crystal and spun into rainbows, catching her eye, bringing beauty and pleasure into daily life. For the Kusak family, the crystal was the fruit of sacrifice and labour. A check at the end of the week. A sustaining art that carried them from Czechoslovakia to the rain-soaked Pacific Northwest.
Twenty-five years after inheriting the singular crystal wine glass, my mom moved to a new neighborhood in Seattle with her wife and two young children. She unpacked her crystal and set it in the cabinet, insulating it from the rest of the home. One morning, she picked up The Seattle Times and flipped through. Between the headlines and obituaries, she was shocked to find a picture of her neighbor, an acquaintance on the block.
He was grinning, wearing a thick apron and holding a delicate crystal glass in his hand. My mom did not wait to read the rest of the article. She threw open the cabinet, grabbed her crystal glass, and burst out of the front door. Shock flooded through her as she ran down the road, bare feet slapping the asphalt. She knocked on the door two houses down. Chuck Kusak, Tony Kusak’s son, opened the door. He saw a slightly sweaty woman carrying a crystal wine glass, babbling about mothers and designs and coincidences. He invited her inside, and they unearthed the connections between their families: how his father sold crystal figurines to the store in Spokane that my grandmother visited.
Two days later, my mother received a package. It was white box on our front porch, square in the center of the doormat. She took the three new crystal glasses, sent by Chuck, out from tissue paper, opened the cabinet door, and placed them next to her mother’s old one. The heirloom was old and new, maintained and different. The story of my grandmother’s death and my mother’s newfound friendship complicated the crystal’s importance.
We do not use or touch these glasses. They represent the beginnings of community, of knocking on stranger’s doors, of giving gifts without reason. I will inevitably inherit my mother’s crystal glasses. My own memories will latch onto them, layering new meanings onto old perceptions. Maybe I will bump into another relative of the Kusak family on the corner of some city. Maybe I will buy a complimentary glass that will be beautiful and that I can barely afford. Maybe I will unearth some other family secret that muddles the origin story of the heirloom. When I inherit the glasses, the old and new, the sadnesses and the ghosts, will coexist. I will be terrified to break the crystal wine glasses. They will watch my children as they watched me, saturating their childhood with aged love and old grief.