In her memoirs Doris Hoss wrote about growing up during the Great Depression, when times were hard. She said, “My family was poor. We had very little to eat. Then my grandfather died and my grandmother came to live with us, and there was even less for each one to eat. But she was a beautiful person and we enjoyed her very much.”
She says, “I particularly remember Christmas. We would have very few things and very small things under our Christmas tree, but always something. And we would open our gift, and then have Christmas dinner. And then my grandmother would say, “Let me show you my pretty things.” She would take me into her room where she had an old chest she had brought when she came to live with us and she would open it up and start to lift out one little thing after another that she had saved all during her life.”
“The thing she was most proud of was a beautiful linen table cloth. It had eight napkins with it. She had the table cloth and napkins wrapped in very soft paper and she would unwrap these things so lovingly and spread out this table cloth and tell me all about how someday we would have a big dinner with a linen table cloth and eight matching napkins. And then she would fold it up and put it away.”
“Many years later, my grandmother died. We went through her things after the funeral and there was the tablecloth and the eight matching napkins, so yellowed now with age that no one could use them. They had never, ever, been used. I thought about how many ordinary meals might have been more special had we eaten them off a linen table cloth with matching napkins. I was sad because my grandmother never found the right time to have a party.”