196. Dead Betty

Nora and her son bought a set of crystal glasses at an estate sale. When they got home, they didn’t put them in a glass display case, instead they poured a glass of milk and toasted to everyday luxuries.

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I’m Nora McInerny and it’s going to be okay. 

I love things, guys. I love treasures. One of my dreams is to just have a little booth in an antique mall filled with the things I’ve found. But I don’t actually want to part with any of these things, so really what I think I want is a little museum of the things that I love. 

I have a habit, when I find something, of trying to learn about the person who had it before me. When I bought a lawn dart trophy at Goodwill, I found the obituary of the man who had won the trophy, looked up his grandkids on Facebook and got DANGEROUSLY CLOSE to messaging them to find out why they didn’t want this trophy! What did lawn darts mean to their grandfather? 

How do they feel about me owning this? And then I thought, oh, I’ll start a whole other podcast called Dead People’s Things where that’s all I talk about. And then I thought, Nora, you have enough podcasts. Focus. 

One of my recent finds was a set of crystal wine goblets.

 We got them when our neighbor Betty died, and our other neighbor Stephanie held an estate sale for all of Betty’s treasures. And Betty had a lot of treasures. Rugs. Dishes. And crystal. So much crystal. 

Waterford Crystal is, or was at least, the gift of all wedding gifts for a long time. In an irish catholic family, you can count on SOMEONE giving you some Waterford.

My uncle Denny gave me a beautiful vase. My godmother gave me two champagne flutes. And the rest of it I have just collected over the years from various estate sales. This surprises some people because crystal is very formal and I am…quite informal. I recorded an entire video on Instagram without realizing that my jeans were unbuttoned. The fanciest pair of shoes that I own are clogs.  I save jelly jars and use them as drinking glasses.

And yet I am very, very attracted to formal items. I would love a grand piano in my very un grand house. I would love to live in a three story house with a wraparound porch and a formal sitting room that nobody sits in. If your grandmother loved it, I love it. 

So back to Betty. Most estate sales will say, or suggest, no children attend. Breakable things. Small bodies. I get it. But I have a fancy boy who loves estate sales and he came with me and he saw this set of goblets sitting in a glass display case and he said, MOM, WE HAVE TO HAVE THESE. WE HAVE TO.

And Betty’s son was there, and he got tears in his eyes, and he said, oh those are so special. I’ve been drinking red wine out of those since I was 8 years old. And you know what? That tracks with the era he was raised in. 

So we bought the goblets, and my son was entranced by them, and at dinner that night, as I was getting ready to pour milk into the aforementioned jelly jars, he asked if he could drink out of a goblet instead.

And I said, yes, of course! OF COURSE! Why else did we buy these? We don’t have a glass display case! What the heck did we buy them for? 

I posted a photo on instagram and I got a really thoughtful message from someone who said oh, milk can actually ruin crystal and I said that’s okay! Someday I’ll be as dead as betty is, and these glasses will be at my own estate sale, and my own son will be telling some other little fancy boy about how he drank milk out of these crystal goblets while he ate kraft mac and cheese off of a plastic cafeteria tray. 

We are here for a short time and a good time, and the things we have are just things, and what do we have things for if not to use them? If the milk ruins these glasses, okay! That’s fine! What’s the point of having things locked away just to look at? What’s the point of having a glass you never drink out of? What’s the point of saving things up for a version of your life that will only exist on a few special occasions in your life time? 

For parties that have already happened, or you hope will happen someday? 

What if today was the special occasion, and the party was now, and the goblets ran over with organic, whole milk or whatever you prefer to drink at mealtimes. 

I didn’t say all that but I said something similar, and she replied and said, you know what? You’re right! I’m busting out the crystal right now.

We don’t use the goblets every day, but when we do, we toast: to Dead Betty, to the day behind us, to the days ahead of us. To the life we have in this very moment.

Cheers.