China

When I was a kid, I read an article which said that people tend to hide away the nice things in their home, saving them for 'special occasions'. The article urged that they not do that, but rather take them out, enjoy them, get pleasure from them. The article made a lot of sense to me, and I repeated it to my mother - who was nice enough not to laugh out loud. What we had was the nice things, you see. There was no crystal hidden away, no china, no elegant porcelain figures.

Well, now we have some of that, and we do the same thing. We did the obligatory china purchase when we got married -- a very plain, simple pattern -- which is currently in a wooden cabinet, along with some crystal classes and pewter bowls. We used to use them fairly often, but when our daughter was born, we stopped. Now that she's significantly older, we occasionally think that we ought to do that again. Sometimes we get out the silver candle holders, and occasionally even the thin glass covers that give them an air of elegance - but usually not. When we think of the china, we like the idea, but we remember that we don't usually wash the china in the dishwasher -- its got a thin gold stripe which we think would get worn off fairly quickly -- so we just don't use it.

I admit, if those thin glass covers ever broke, I'd be quite unhappy, because I doubt we could or would replace them. I know that its silly -- we're effectively without them now, because we rarely take them out from that wooden cabinet -- but that's how we feel. We ought to use the china this weekend, we'll say, but we don't do it.

Someday, we should do that.