EVERY DAY IS A SPECIAL OCCASION

I Use My Good China Every Single Day

And my sterling silver, too — why not?

Growing up in a middle-class Southern home we — like many others in the sixties and seventies — had a large china cabinet that dominated the dining room. It bulged with silver trays, crystal bowls, and several sets of fine china.

The cabinet was my mother’s pride and joy. She forbade us from opening the delicately latched glass doors, and heaven forbid if we ever took out a piece to admire.

The “good china,” as she called it, remained safe and secure behind those glass doors until Easter, Thanksgiving and Christmas.

On those holidays my mother would haul everything out. I was tasked with polishing the sterling while she carefully hand washed whatever sets of china she decided to use for the holiday dinners.

After our guests departed and after the leftover turkey was wrapped and whisked away to the freezer and refrigerator she would carefully — almost reverently — return the china and silver to its home in the cabinet.

There they would languish until the next round of holiday dinners.

I remember a time I invited a small group of sorority sisters over for dinner one evening. I was eighteen and pledging Alpha Phi sorority at the university. I was by no means a great cook but I did know how to whip up a few presentable dishes.

Meatloaf — a reliable mainstay found on dinner tables of most families of that era — was cooking in the oven. It was to be served with mashed potatoes, fresh green beans and a salad with dinner rolls. We were having iced tea to drink and sherbet for dessert.

I was anxious to impress my friends — not so much with my culinary talents but with the beautiful china that graced the inside of mother’s gigantic cabinet.

“Absolutely not,” my mother stated firmly, looking shocked at the very notion.

“Why?” I whined. “Why can’t I use the good china for my dinner party?”

For a moment she seemed at a loss for an explanation. “It’s not a formal dinner party, and you can use the dishes in the kitchen cabinet just as well. They are perfectly suitable,” she said, signaling the discussion was over.

The problem was, they weren’t suitable. The family dishes used daily by mom, dad and my three siblings were a combination of extraordinarily unattractive patterns and mismatched odds and ends.

Our kitchen pantry was packed with Golden Wheat plates and saucers. A wretched design in my opinion. Back then Duz Detergent ran a promotional campaign to rival Tide, its biggest competitor.

Each month a different piece of Golden Wheat dinnerware was placed in boxes of the laundry soap. American housewives everywhere rushed out to complete their patterns. The promotion was a resounding success.

We also had a wild assortment of chipped and cracked Fire-King, Melamine, and Pyrex. Today, some of this stuff is “vintage valuable,” but back then the thought of trotting out this sad collection to feed my sorority sisters on was humiliating.

A plan began forming in my mind as I placed the roasted potatoes back into the oven to stay warm. My friends would be arriving around 5 pm and it was just a little past three.

Mom bustled around the house barking orders at my younger brother and two sisters. She was packing them up for a week-end outing at my uncle’s horse farm, some fifty miles north of the city.

She planned to drive them to Uncle Phil’s, eat dinner with the family, and return shortly before 10 PM. Dad was in St. Louis for a week of sales calls preceded by a week-end General Electric sales convention.

Mom was ecstatic. With dad away and the kids out of her hair she had plans to participate in an annual duplicate bridge tournament. The next morning she’d meet her best friend Marge at the Peabody Hotel where they would share a room for the night and play bridge all day Saturday and Sunday.

I, of course, was also taking advantage of the situation. Since it was my turn as a sorority pledge to host a dinner for my “big sister” and the sorority’s officers, it was perfect that everyone was away.

I wouldn't have to suffer the indignity of dad’s dumb jokes or mom poking her head into the dining room every five minutes to ask “do y’all need anything?” (Yes, to be left alone.)

And best of all I wouldn’t have to shoo away the younger siblings who’d inevitably drag their toys into the adjoining living room and make a racket.

Everybody was happy.

The only kink in my evening was the question of the china. But it was no longer a question. I knew exactly what I was going to do. The problem at hand was getting everyone out of the house before my guests arrived.

On false pretenses I dragged out a load of dishes from the kitchen and stacked them on the dining room table. Mom nodded with approval. They looked hideously out of place on the off-white linen tablecloth which mom did allow me to use.

I cheerfully carried out everyone’s luggage and popped them into the trunk of mom’s Chevrolet. I couldn’t get them out of there fast enough.

It was 4:15.

I stood at the door until mom’s car crept slowly from the driveway onto the street. Sweet Jesus, how long does it take to put a key into the switch and start the damn engine I wondered.

Finally! I waved, blew a few kisses and closed the door. I pounded into the dining room taking steps like an escaped gorilla. I snatched up the freak-ware from the dining room and barreled toward the china cabinet.

Steady, steady… My hands were shaking. Take a deep breath, take a deep breath.

I slowly and carefully pulled out five place settings from mom’s Herend Rothschild Bird collection. I paired them with her Gorham sterling silver flatware and five heavy lead crystal drinking glasses.

I tossed the paper napkins mom had so thoughtfully provided and replaced them with matching off-white linen napkins. From the cabinet’s drawers I found the sterling napkin rings. Thankfully the crystal salt and pepper shakers didn’t need refilling, but I replenished the silver sugar bowl, and placed a stick of butter into the china butter dish.

Using a step ladder, I pulled down the large and rarely used crystal flower vase from the very top of the cabinet. Minutes later I filled it with red and yellow roses from our back yard bushes.

Candlesticks! I almost forgot. They too were on top of the cabinet so I brought back the ladder to bring down the silver candlesticks.

Thirty minutes later the table looked like one from the cover of Southern Living Magazine. Everything was beautiful.

I lit the candles and looked at my watch. It was ten minutes before five.

The evening turned out wonderfully. My sorority sisters exclaimed over the food and the graciousness of the table. (Surely meat loaf tastes much better served on Rothschild Bird china!)

What struck me that evening, and what remained with me all these years is what our sorority president said as she left.

It was the effort I went to, she said, that made her feel special. The beauty of the table — the fine china, sparkling crystal and gleaming silver — all combined, made her feel like she was important and worthy.

She gave me a warm hug at the door. Wouldn’t it be lovely to dine like this every night?

Mom stubbornly stuck with her notion of only using the contents of the china cabinet for holidays. She only broke with tradition once when I informed her we wouldn’t be having my engagement brunch at her house if I couldn’t access her precious cabinet.

I’ve been married for over 25 years. I’ve got not only china and silver received as wedding presents but also some beautiful and rare antique pieces inherited from my mother-in-law, who passed away at almost 101 years of age.

And, I also inherited many items from mom’s china cabinet.

These days — every day — Michael and I use our fine china, crystal, and sterling silver. Breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks.

Sterling silver knives spread peanut butter on our whole wheat bread. Crystal glasses are filled with water, tea or lemonade. The flatware is stored in our kitchen drawers alongside all of our other flatware and yes, we wash it all in the dishwasher.

Even Martha Stewart agrees that washing sterling silver in the dishwasher is perfectly OK.

Several of my friends are horrified that we take this casual approach to using our china and silver. Others are used to it, and several more have begun dragging out their seldomly used finery and are themselves using rather than storing them.

And that of course is my whole point.

Why on earth would you want to hoard away these items? And “save” them, for what? To only use on Special Occasions?

Final thoughts

What constitutes a Special Occasion?

I’d say every day above the ground is a Special Occasion. Although I’ve been using our china and silver daily for years, when I was diagnosed with cancer in 2017 (now in remission) I became even more keenly aware of how precious every day is.

Do I worry about breaking an expensive plate or cracking or chipping some beautiful crystal? Are you kidding? That sounds like a First World problem to me.

I have a friend who lives alone and has two huge cabinets filled to the brim with Baccarat glasses and bowls. We’ve dined at his home many times and he’s never — not once — set out any of those glasses.

I’ve teased him about it, asking if our company is not important enough. He just laughed and mumbled something about someone accidentally breaking them.

Damn! You could break a dozen and no one would ever miss them!

I’ve broken and cracked some of our dishes, chipped some china and crystal glasses, and de-capped a lovely antique lidded bowl. Shit happens. I didn’t lose a minute of sleep over it.

They are all just things. My philosophy is if you’re fortunate enough to have any of these types of items, then use them for god sake. Use them now. Don’t wait for a holiday or special occasion. Don’t store stuff away because you might break them.

Every day is a holiday. Every day is a Special Occasion. Live for the Now, not for the Some Day.

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