Vintage China

Where do vintage china dishes go to live when nobody wants them anymore?
When grandparents, parents or your Aunt Betty die, and they leave you a hutch full of fine porcelain china, what do you do with it?
Do you take it home and dust it, maybe wash it, and save it for your oldest daughter? Put it in the basement until she gets married?
I don’t think so. I have never seen that happen, so what do you do with all those pieces of vintage china? Yard sale it?
First, you try to give it away to relatives who loved Aunt Betty. Four boxes full. They laugh. Then, you ask your friends, and they laugh.
A yard sale? Yup, then all their old friends show up. They wonder how you could bear to part with this family treasure and no, they don’t want it, not even for free. They have no room for it and they use paper plates now.
So do you send it off to Goodwill? Will they pick it up? You call them and the lady at Goodwill hangs up on you.
So you get mad at them and bring it to the Salvation Army, right? You sit outside for half an hour chain-smoking, but you don’t go in the building. You’re afraid the china will end up chipped and cracked, eventually tossed into the dumpster. Somebody might buy the serving pieces, but that’s about it. No one wants a huge set of china anymore.
Sad, but true and even sadder, once upon a time, the china was valuable. It has life left in it, not a chip, not a crack, not a flaw and it’s so pretty.
Your little town has a recycle table at the dump and with good intentions, you load up the boxes of china and drive there.
You are start to feel anxious and sick to your stomach at the thought of leaving Aunt Betty’s china defenseless. How many Christmases and Thanksgivings did you eat off that china?
Your husband said he could use it for target practice and you wonder how many other guys will think that.
You leave your boxes in the car while you look around the dump table.
“Not today,” the guy working there tells you, “we have too much china. I just threw three sets in the dumpster.”
There are four boxes of china still on the dump table. Blue Willow. All boxed up. Your favorite! So, you put them in your car. Now you have eight boxes of china.
Your husband also knows you love vintage china and every time he sees a box at the dump, he brings it home, trying to be nice, because he hates clutter. Now, the garden shed is full of boxes of unwashed china.
Once a month, he asks you when you’re gonna clean out the upstairs and get rid of all that china that you don’t use.
You abruptly remind him that he brought most of it home for you and that it’s not in his way.
He says, “But you have four rooms full of china. You can’t move up there without bumping into china.” You remind him of his own collections. “I don’t tell you what you can keep in your man cave room.” You give him the look and he walks away, shaking his head.
That’s where vintage china goes to live. Your house.