A spot of tea?

I got this tea set when I was seven years old.

As you can see, it features a multitude of very happy bunnies. Some are hanging out by the pond. Some are simply wearing top hats and bonnets. Others are stringing together flower garlands and staring up from their tea saucers with anatomically impossible smiles.

I love it.

The colors! The details! And my goodness-- the bunnies!  As a child I longed to be one of those bunnies, frolicking in a world of painted pastels. Perhaps my taste is simultaneously old fashioned and decidedly childish for my age. After all, I have a fetish for lace, anything white with ruffles and big flowered prints. I spent three quarters of my free time in elementary school making my bed, reflecting on books and arranging flowers. But looking at this tea set makes me feel young again.

Really young. 

When I first got it, Cecily and I had a grand old time with the bunny tea set. We had "tea pohtties," which were really just the bunny-head teacups filled with Ovaltine and tiny toasted Melba crackers which were our cakes. We wore white gloves, long gauzy dresses and my mom's old lipstick and I think it was the most sophisticated I have ever felt-- then or now. By the time I was 11 I had packed my tea set away, on account of it being too babyish. I remember peeking into the packaging later and spying a shriveled spider at the bottom of one of the cups. I gave myself a ten year hiatus from the tea set then. If there is one thing I cannot abide, it's a spider in my teacup.

When I unpacked it last week the spider was still there.

The bunny tea set now sits in my home-- all shiny and clean and spider free. Perhaps it's a decoration best used for a six year old girl's bedroom and not for a married lady. But then again, so are most of the things that I love most. I don't think Jason minds too much. After all, he knows that the bunny tea set is just the most prominent parts of me-- the old woman and the little girl-- mixed into a motley of brightly colored and happy pieces of porcelain.