Ok, sorry, I have a thread. I've been thinking a lot this year about my great-grandmother. She died way before I was born, in the 70s, but I inherited her plates and bowls—my mother had them and she gave them to me when I moved into my first apartment.

I hadn't thought about it much before, but being stuck inside this year, I kept wondering: "Am I the first to eat Chinese leftovers off this plate?" Would she be horrified at the depression meals her dumbass great-granddaughter has on her china? (They're the only plates I own...)

It's a weird type of quasi-intimacy (?) with someone I never met + don't know much about. But I know her one great tragedy was that her daughter, my great-aunt, died of polio at age five. It wrecked her—she was very protective, but of course, there was no way to protect from this

But her grandchildren were born after the vaccine. She lived to see the disease that had haunted her whole life just... end. I've been turning that over lately—her sadness, how many shared it, and what came after—as I think of her when I use her plates every night

tl;dr, very excited to see people get vaccinated, grateful for my great-grandmother and happy to have this connection after a period of feeling weirdly haunted by her plates, I hope she will forgive me for chipping one of her teacups. And here are some cookies I made tonight.