China and Crystal and Silver, Oh My

We've got some simple china, and I like it. It's a cream background with gold trim. One year I saw my sister in law's Villeroy and Bosch china set, light blue background with dark blue pattern, and I thought Wow, thats nice. I mentioned that to my wife, which turned out not to be the best idea in the world. She didn't get mad, exactly, but I had to be careful how I spoke about it, for a while.

We don't use the china and crystal very much, mostly because we don't really care for having to hand wash them. I know that dishwashers now can handle that kind of thing (ours might be able to, but I don't think so). I'd like to use it more often. We have spurts of doing it, and then we forget for a while. Months will go by, and one of us will say Hey, why don't we use the china? and we will...until we forget, again. I'd also like to get some actual silver silverware -- I was polluted with the envy gene several years ago when we had dinner at the Green Room of the Hotel DuPont in Wilmington, Delaware. They had big, heavy silver pieces, and I liked them. I mean, really liked them. We went back years later, and they'd switched to a lighter placeware, which wasn't nearly as delightful to the touch. When we were first married, we wanted to get some actual silver, but the cost startled us, so we got some pewter pieces which, while nice, weren't actually what we wanted. Okay, what I wanted. When I was a kid, I remember, my grandmother had her ordinary silverware and her special silverware that you didn't touch on fear of your life. I was startled, years later, to discover that her special stuff was just cast steel, like the stuff she used every day -- it just wasn't banged up like her every day stuff.

One of the things that impressed me, while reading Almost French, was her description of how many (all? maybe) of the French make a big deal about setting the table for meals. The idea is that of course you want the table to look good, so you will of course put out the candles, the spotless china, the gleaming crystal and the glittering silver, if you have it -- but even if you do not, you'll still make a effort, with the crisp linens, the carefully arranged places, the flowers. It all sounded so good to me, and it still does. Thats what we try to achieve, when we take it all out. Are we successful?

Well.. you know, China's a problem we've had to wrestle with for a very long time....