MIMI'S FANCY CHINA JAR

“…she went on to acquire many fine things.”

There’s a Southern expression (also a Flatt and Scruggs song): “Don’t get above your raisin’.” Basically it means don’t get too fancy and leave your people and values behind. But I’ve always hated it. What’s wrong with breaking free of the bonds of Podunk and striving to wring as much fanciness from life as we can?

My grandmother, Della Mai Agee, got above her raising in the very best way. As a girl in Celina (“suh-LYE-nuh”), Tennessee, she had only one doll to her name, which her uncle threw in the fire. The reason remains unclear, but that little vignette might explain a lot about why she married and left town at 15.

Although she never would have a lot of money, through her talent, thrift, and taste, she went on to acquire many fine things. As a seamstress, she’d take ladies to the department store so they could show her the kinds of dresses they wanted, then she’d come home and make up the patterns out of newspaper. She saved the money she made in bank envelopes and bought nice things, quality things: A chest full of real silverware. Globe lamps made of rose-colored china. Hobnail glass ashtrays. 

Those ashtrays got a lot of use. Man, could she smoke! Long before I wished I could sew the way she did, I wished I could smoke the way she did—one leg elegantly crossed over the other, ashing with the tip of a perfectly painted nail like a film-noir heroine. (She had a habit of absentmindedly tapping her knee with her cigarette hand, so a lot of her housedresses had tiny little burn-holes, which I’d put my finger over when she let me rest my head in her lap.)

She was famously glamorous in our little town of Mt. Juliet. When the local photographer took her picture, he left it up in his window as an advertisement, a story that my mother never tired of telling and I never tired of hearing. Her beauty was always a point of pride for both of us, as if we had a hand in creating her and not the other way around.

She kept this little china jar on one of her marble-topped tables—never put anything in it, just kept it out as what my friend Gary would call a “shitknack.” Like Mimi, it’s delicate and swirling and elegant, and the little feet remind me of her gold metallic houseshoes. I keep my makeup brushes in it now. It makes me feel fancy every day.

—Amy Maclin