Growing up, my family often took weekend trips to area museums or state parks. Our longer vacations usually involved some sort of historical location like Civil War battlefields or national monuments.
On one of those trips, we visited Mesa Verde National Park in southern Colorado. Mesa Verde was home to the Ancestral Pueblo people (sometimes referred to as Anasazi). These people built homes among cliffs to help protect their people from invaders. Today, the remains of the cliff dwellings are a popular destination for history buffs. Over the years, the artifacts found at Mesa Verde revealed a lot about how the people there lived.
I was only seven-years-old at the time, but I remember a lot about our visit to Mesa Verde. Along with touring the cliff dwellings, I remember a specific display inside the visitors center.
The display showed various clay plates, bowls, and cups found among the cliff dwellings. There was also a kid-sized set of similar dishes. A mother had made her child a play set. I’m sure she had no idea that thousands of years later, another child would look into a glass case at her child’s toys. But that set of small bowls and pitchers captured my seven-year-old imagination.
The Stories Behind the Dishes
Many museums display dish sets, sometimes those owned by the specific family, or remains of everyday dishes found in an area of historical significance.
So what is it about old dishes that make historians want to preserve them? While we might never know the names of the owners, those dishes tell future generations about life in the past. We can better understand what life was like hundreds, or even thousands, of years ago. Those dishes tell us that that particular group of people lived in family units, lived in homes where they ate meals together, or lived with financial means to have food brought to them. And plates and bowls decorated with paints or engravings also give insight into cultural and ceremonial events.
What Will Our Kitchenware Tell Others?
Writing about ancient plates and cups might seem a little weird. But, there are actually a lot of similarities between historians and fiction writers. It’s all about the story. The untold stories behind dishes always make me wonder what the lives of their owners were like. And, as a writer, creating believable characters means telling their stories, including how the lived, their families, and their interests.
Many of today’s household items are mass produced. And unless you’re using your grandmother’s good china for Christmas dinner, most of us don’t think too much about the craftsmanship of our plates or cups. As long as they have an appealing design, our dishes are just dishes. However, there is one everyday kitchen item that we pay a little more attention to the design.
Coffee mugs.
What Is It About a Good Coffee Mug?
Whether they’re mass produced or something handmade by a local artist, the coffee and tea mugs we use help tell our stories. The messages, designs, and logos on coffee mugs tell others about our lives.
In thinking about those miniature cups and pitchers I saw at Mesa Verde, I wonder what kinds of current coffee mugs will one day make their way into a museum. And, more importantly, what stories will they tell future generations about how we lived.
I asked my family and friends for their stories behind their favorite coffee and tea mugs. I specifically asked that if they had a favorite mug, what was it about that particularly one they liked most.
While there were different preferences depending on the situation (home vs work, travelling, etc…), most who shared pictures of their favorite mug had design or inspirational meanings. My cousin described it perfectly, saying “I love mugs because they’re an inexpensive, small way to express your personality. It’s a fun knowledge to know no one else has my exact same mug collection.”
One of my best friends shared that when she was pregnant with her first child, her sister-in-law gave her a coffee mug that said “Beware the Sleep-Deprived Mom” as a fun gift for her impending sleepless nights with a newborn. While my friend found the humor in the message, what made this gift even more special is that her sister-in-law has since passed away. That small gesture years ago now serves as a reminder of family support during a significant time in her life.
My sister-in-law has a more playful approach to her current favorite mug – Hank, the septopus, from Disney’s FINDING DORY movie. The mug represents both a personal interest in Disney, as well as her career as a math educator. Hank looks like an octopus, but as my sister-in-law pointed out, he is correctly identified in the movie as a septopus due to only having seven tentacles. The fact the character utilizes math terminology added to her love of the Hank.
What Do My Mugs Say About Me?
Like many writers, I have a collection of coffee/tea mugs. I didn’t really start drinking much coffee or tea until graduate school, but since then, I’ve acquired a variety of mugs.
So what do my mugs say about me?
The mugs I keep in regular rotation show different sides to my personality. While I do have a few favorites, I often choose my daily mug to match a specific event or team, or to match the mood I’m in at the time.
My state
Although I’ve moved many times, I was born in Nebraska, and have spent the majority of my life here (just in different cities). So naturally I have mugs to represent the place I call home and where I went to college. The mug I have from the University of Nebraska at Kearney has an original logo from when the school changed from Kearney State to join the university system. So, it’s part of both my personal history and the school’s story.
Favorite sports teams
I love sports, so of course I had to have mugs representing my favorite teams. My dad first got season tickets for Nebraska Cornhuskers football in the 1960s. Naturally, I grew up as a Husker fan, and have been to all but a handful of home games since 1995. As for other teams, growing up in Colorado, I followed the Denver Broncos from an early age. For baseball, when we first got cable the Atlanta Braves played most of their games on TBS. And since my mom was from Georgia, it was an easy choice to pick the Braves. As for the Duke Blue Devils, I started rooting for them in the late 1980s mostly to annoy my brother and dad. But over time, I became a die hard fan.
Favorite television shows
I don’t watch many regular television shows. So for any to be worthy of me getting a mug, they have to be pretty special. My two favorite shows of all-time are I LOVE LUCY and FRASIER. Even though I’ve seen every episode dozens of times, they still make me laugh. I own the complete DVD sets of both shows.
Literary life
My love of books has existed for as long as I can remember. I have British literature covered from Shakespeare to Harry Potter. American literature is represented by Willa Cather, who spent much of her formative years in Nebraska. I’ve visited her childhood home in Red Cloud several times. (And ironically, she wrote several books about various cliff dwelling sites in the American Southwest. So it’s appropriate to include her in an article that came about because of my visit to Mesa Verde.)
Leftovers
I have several mugs that don’t really fit in the other categories, but they represent other interests. Naturally, I have a cat mug. And it even matches the real orange cat I own. (Or, he owns me really.) There’s my souvenir of my trip to Alaska. The British flag mug is multi-purposed in that it goes with my interest in British literature and because during some recent ancestry research, I learned I’m 65% British. And Eeyore? Well, he just makes me smile.
What Story Do Your Dishes Tell?
Forget about looking into the future to know what others would think about our lives. If total strangers walked into your home today and saw your coffee mug collection, what would they learn about you? Your choice in coffee mugs could give them significant hints into your story.
The next time you reach for a coffee mug for that morning caffeine jolt, take a look at your mug. Think about what part of your story your mug tells the world. In a single image or quote, you send a message to others about who you are.
Choose wisely.
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