Where Would Thanksgiving be Without a Plate?

Plate. The word reminds me of a child’s plate. My plate. It is sterling silver. In the center of the plate Mickey Mouse rides a horse. On one side of the dish these words are inscribed: My Mickey Mouse Spoon Goes Here. Opposite that side are the words: My Mickey Fork Goes Here. This plate is 84 years old. My mother and father received this plate as a present when I was born. There may have been other presents but this plate holds a bundle of memories. Maybe for her then. Certainly for me now.

My parents were married in 1922. Like so many other folks they found they could not make a living on the farm. So they became part of a migration from South Alabama to textile mills in Georgia and other places. They were promised life would be better. My mother and father brought their meagre possessions and lived in a tiny apartment with another couple in a one bed room duplex owned by the mill. They found most of the promises made were kept. They could both get jobs in the mill. They had lodging within walking distance of work. They had indoor plumbing. They had electric lights. All utilities were provided. And so they worked long twelve-hour shifts six days a week. During the war—seven days every week. One day they got their own mill house over looking the mill. Train tracks ran in front of our four room house.

Everyone was having babies—but not my folks. They kept trying but for thirteen years they were

childless. My mother especially wanted children. Finally after thirteen long years their first child came along. They named me Roger after Will Rogers who had died a month before. Why Roger? My mother said: “He makes me laugh.”

Someone probably an official in the mill gave my parents this sterling silver Mickey Mouse plate. My mother loved that plate. It represented so much. Laughter, a healthy child, joy and answered prayers. And for a poor hard-working couple with little of the world’s goods, especially in the depression years of 1935 laughter filled their little four-room house. Four years later my brother was born.

Like most of us my journey has been winding and circuitous. There have been dark days and wondering what I would ever do. But this plate—the only sterling silver in our home—still after all these years reminds me that I was a blessed child. Out of their poverty they gave me a richness that money cannot buy.In the rush of many things I forget that joy and that laughter many days. But when I Look at this plate—I remember how proud my folks were when I came into the world. 

My mother and father worked in that mill all their adult lives. They sacrificed  enormously to give me and my brother what they never had. They never finished high school. They never owned a car. But their two children always had everything they needed. 

I was the first one in my family to go to college. And the September morning I left for school my mother came home from work to make sure I had everything, My ride pulled up in front of our house. I hauled my footlocker out to his car. I was too young to know how hard that morning was for my mother. She stood on the porch and did not come down to the car. She didn’t want me to see her tears. She knew what I then did not know. Things would never be as they were. I was moving out slowly in to a larger world that my parents had ever seen. But that morning she let me go. She did not hold me back. 

And for the next four years of school every week I received a crumpled up fifteen dollars from her in my mail. And about once as month there would be a huge homemade cake in the mail. I’ve had a lot on my plate through the years. College and Seminary and a wife and kids and church after church until here I am at 84.

But maybe I have not had as much on the plate through the years as that little tiny Sterling silver Mickey Mouse plate. It is piled high with love and acceptance and forgivenesses and joy and sacrifice. 

It is good and healthy and healing, too to hold that plate in my hands after all these years. She loved that plate. But she loved me—what more could anyone ask from a plate?

--Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com