Good China

During our wandering trips my guy and I often stop at antique malls. We like old things, and they bring back some nice memories -- at least, for him. Lately I've been noticing more and more fine china dish sets (what my mom called good china) being sold for very big bucks.

I wouldn't give you ten cents for them. Why? Here's the backstory:

My mother had three sets of china. One we never used; my uncle brought it back from Germany after the war and sat in a hutch my entire childhood. I don't think we were even allowed to dust it. The second was a set Mom used at Thanksgiving and Christmas for the big family meals. It was my grandmother's china and had to be hand-washed because it was very old. The third set was used on other holidays and whenever family visited; I think that was the set of china my mother got as a wedding present. Another set that had to be hand-washed, too.

Guess who had to hand-wash and hand-dry the two sets of china while Mom stood by watching to make sure it wasn't scratched or dropped? The kid who never scratched or dropped things, aka me.

Because it was so expensive and delicate you'd think my mother would have washed it, but no. It was my responsibility to take care of it and make sure nothing happened to it. My mother always harped on me if I didn't handle it with extreme care, hovering over me the entire time. It took an hour or more to wash, dry and put it back in the hutch. I was terrified each and every time I handled it, and Mom hovering didn't help.

I never asked for that job, either, I just got stuck with it because my clumsy younger sister couldn't be trusted with the good china, and my older sister flatly refused to have anything to do with it (to keep the peace my mother never made her do anything.) I never saw why the good china was so precious; it became yet another thing about the holidays that I despised and resented. Now as an adult I understand that my mother was probably afraid to wash it herself, and wanted a scapegoat to blame in case something got broken, which would have made my grandmother furious. I'm not excusing what she did, but I finally made peace with it.

Fast forward to when I got married: my mother told me that she would take me shopping for my own china set, and I completely offended her by politely declining. When she saw what I later bought myself instead (a nice cheap set of Corelle in the English Breakfast pattern) she was upset, too. Why didn't I want to have good china? All women should have a decent set. I refused to discuss it, as telling her what I thought of her good china wouldn't help the situation.

Years later, when my mother decided to distribute her three china sets to her daughters I politely refused the one she wanted to give to me (my grandmother's set. Ironically my older sister got the really expensive, never used set from Germany.) I happily told Mom she could give my set to my older sister. She was really shocked and hurt by my refusal, and from then on it remained one of the major rifts between us.

As for me? I didn't care. Never once have I felt guilty about refusing to take my share of that good china. What I never told my mother was how much I hated it. If I could have smashed every piece of all three sets and gotten away with it, I would have.

Presently I still own one set of Corelle dishes in the Delano pattern as you see here (over 35 years most of my first Corelle set got broken because, you know, life. Didn't bother me at all.) I picked out this set because it's pretty, cheap, and I can throw it in the dishwasher. I actually just learned while writing this post that the pattern has since been discontinued, so when I run out of these dishes I'll buy another set of Corelle in a different pattern. I don't care if it gets broken. I don't care if people think less of me because we use Corelle instead of good china during holidays or special family events. I absolutely adore my cheap dishes.

Moral of the story: do what makes you happy. You will never regret that.

Image credit: the first image in this post is by StockSnap from Pixabay.