Why I Had a Place Setting for 20

Why else? To impress people…duh…

In the above photo, my friends and I hosted 500+ people to honour people doing amazing things in our city of Ottawa, Canada. I sure wasn’t amazing. Those people were.

Sure, I had won some awards. But, admittedly, some were just given to me because I was on TV, and that meant publicity for their cause. I knew that. I accepted the awards, anyway. It was good for the TV station.

I am most proud of journalism awards and my Queen’s Jubilee Medal for helping children who have been sexually assaulted.

I was one. I was 9 years old when it happened.

But, when I established the Amazing People segment on CTV Ottawa, I started to understand that I hadn’t really done anything really profound. It’s probably the first time I started to question everything…like everything.

These folks overcame a lot!

My point of pride that winter was that I had a matching place setting for 20 people for Christmas, and I had hand-painted Christmas ornaments for the people who ate off those plates, with matching bows.

My parents kept their massive place setting in a box for almost 50 years, unused, because it was extremely “expensive”. On E-Bay, when the box came to me, I found out it was not valuable.

I bought into that concept of what was “valuable”. For sure I did.

I could NEVER imagine having my first huge Christmas dinner with mismatched plates! The horror! Oh…but, how the table looked. It was stunning. Like a magazine cover.

I hadn’t slept much - But, everything looked nice, right? Until it didn’t….

A turkey pan cracked and the grease drippings, basically, lit the stove on fire - and the other turkey, to boot.

It was quickly extinguished — without toxic stuff - and dinner was saved, but I cried in the back yard, while trying to cook veggies on a BBQ in a Canadian winter. Everything was RUINED!!

What was at the root of that pain was fear. Fear of not being enough. Of not having my shit together (or the perception of it). Of not working hard enough for my family. Rejection. Disappointment. Fear of being deemed not competent. I was raised to present as perfect. Don’t show weakness.

When I downsized to move into a house on wheels, I opened the box with the plates. I kept 4 and immediately started using them and (gasp) putting them in the dishwasher. The rest were donated.

Those plates taught me that saving the “good stuff” is an exercise for fools. I didn’t enjoy that Christmas dinner because I was worried about being “perfect”…well, perceived as perfect. Where was my authentic self in that bullshit? Did anyone there care about the plate bullshit? I had hoped to win some points, to experience gratitude…ya…that didn’t happen. Not their fault. It was my fault for having false expectations.