Emma has a complete china service for twelve. Dinner plates, salad plates, coffee cups, sugar bowl, everything, right down to the butter pats. Beginning when she was thirteen, Emma’s mother assembled the complete service one piece at a time—a plate this week, a saucer next, selecting her purchases carefully from a display at the front of Aisle 4 at the local grocery store. Each week she would set aside enough to buy the featured (and discounted) piece, and just a little more to save up to buy larger pieces like the serving platters.
From time to time Emma chipped in part of her allowance to buy the accessory pieces like the butter pats. If she was going to have a complete set, she wanted it to be a complete set!
Emma was an optimistic girl who thought she’d be going places in this world, the kind of places where she would have occasion to use her china for gala dinner parties. In such circles service for twelve would be required. That’s how Emma saw her future. That’s how her mother painted it.
When she was in high school Emma would sometimes hear other girls discussing the things they needed to lay in store for marriage—things like china. Emma always felt proud and confident that she was ahead of the game. Her china service was complete and safely stored for those times and places she dreamed about.
Emma lived in the country, then later in the suburbs of a major southern city. She seldom went downtown. It wasn’t until Emma was in her early twenties that she discovered the china and silver department at the city’s leading department store. She was surprised to learn it was possible to buy a complete china service all at once, all in once place. She was more surprised to learn that the money her mother had spent on her complete service wouldn’t buy more than a few salad plates at the department store. She was taken aback that there were women—quite a lot of women—who could afford the price of department store china.
It was about that time that Emma began to discover other things that cast a haze over the future that had been so bright and clear in her mind. It was about that time that Emma realized that in the world of fine china and fine dining her grocery store china wouldn’t measure up. Not only would the plates and cups and saucers for which her mother had sacrificed not fit in the world of gala dinner parties, they would be thought shabby and out of place—an embarrassment. Emma wondered if the same wasn’t true of her.
Emma served dinner on her china only once. Only she and her husband were seated at the formica topped dinette table with chrome legs in their tiny apartment. They used paper napkins and stainless steel forks and spoons. When dinner was over and the dishes were washed, Emma put away the china and a complete service of dreams.
It was all embarrassing to her. The china from Aisle 4, her dinner party fantasies and the confidence it had all given her. She realized for the first time that she had never seen fancy women in the grocery store—only women like her mother. Women who toiled and sacrificed so that their daughters might inherit a poor girl’s dreams.
Her china service followed Emma over the years, across the country and from home to home. What had once been her treasure became a constant reminder of who she was and where she had come from. It also told her where she would never go and what she would never do.
After a few years Emma had forgotten that her china service was beautiful. She couldn’t see that the pattern was made no less elegant by its simplicity, and her mother’s love and sacrifice lent a shine and luster that can not be found in department store china.
Like Emma herself, her china is delicate and pretty. When held against the light, if one has the eyes to see, its surfaces still reflect hope and happy dreams. When Emma thinks of her china she can only remember where they both came from. She does not remember they were both born of love.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I remember the wonderful set of dishes my mother collected from the A & P Grocery Store in Clarksville, TN. We couldnt wait until Friday evening when Mama did her grocery store shopping. After we unloaded the car and put all the groceries up we waited for Mama to unwrap her newest dish. Today that set of dishes is proudly displayed in her china cabinet. That set remains in the china cabinet today. It rests on the same shelf that also houses another set of dishes that was collected through the grocery store. These two complete sets don’t quite stand up to the elegant dishware my mother received as a gift from my dad some years back. We considered the “real china” most beautiful. Two weeks ago today my mother died. Her packed to the brim china cabinet is standing where it has been for a number of years. While nothing has been touched soon it will be my job to sort through many of her belongings. I have no doubt that my siblings and I may need to draw straws for the grocery store dish sets for they are most valuable. Most likely none of us will ask for the expensive china that came from one of the better jewelry stores in Clarksville. Afterall it is those two sets of grocery store dishes that brings us back to a time when memories could not be purchased by simply writing a check marked paid in full.
I also remember Mother buying china from the local grocery store. I always thought they were lovely and wished they were still around. I am blessed to have my grandmother’s china cabinet and it’s full of my own china that was purchased in a department store. Your blog reminded me of all the hopes and dreams I had for the future while collecting the set I own today. I’m a blessed woman but I will continue to hope and dream – china or paper plate.
In the late 1960’2 my Mother collected some tall tea cups from the local grocery store , one week at a time.She thought they were beautiful-her treasures. Well, my Dad gave them away. She just told me this last week. She was really hurt by that and I’d love to be able to find them somewhere. Is there anyway to find out who the maker of of tea cups is? If so could someone please let me know. Thanks-Leeanne