On China (Plates)

Last year about this time, I was talking to a friend about the holidays. He’s in his 60’s, and he had said that many people his age were getting out the China and eating on it, just the married couple. I guess a lot of people in my generation don’t want China anymore, so the boomers are using it more often.

This is just one of a whole bunch of things that are getting lost between generations these days. As we become more and more “online”, we are getting less rooted in our hometowns, with our families. It’s seemingly contradictory, actually. My grandfather gardened, my parents didn’t, and now we’re trying to garden. The wife’s grandma had chickens growing up, now we have chickens in the backyard. We didn’t get any wisdom in these areas from our families, we got it from the internet.

A friend of mine identified an insect at my house with the kids over the summer; he used AI to do so. I told him, “This is what AI does; it makes boomers smarter, but millennials dumber.” But the internet CAN make millennials smarter, if we choose that. We can learn how to eat healthy and move more often. We can learn ancient recipes and how to keep a kombucha SCOBY going. We weren’t given much of an inheritance of earthly wisdom, but we can find that wisdom online from strangers.

But then we should hand it down to our kids; not keep it to ourselves. They’ll have the internet, but they can also get the in-person instruction. And that’s why I want the China. I want to make memories with real people in real life. I want to shape my kids’ tastes through routines and traditions.

So, we went out and bought some China at Goodwill. We actually had a fight about China, some 13 years into our marriage. It was great. When we couldn’t find a whole set, we decided to hodge podge it together. Now, we have a maximum of two matching plates, and a few platters. When we have a birthday or special occasion, we get out the China. One day, our kids will want the China.

This was a post about China (plates), but it didn’t really feel like it to me.