When we left California the last time in 1992 to move back to Ohio where we raised our family, my husband wanted to give me something beautiful to remember our five years there. He was working for a bank in Beverly Hills as a trust officer, and his stories about his clients and who he saw during his lunch hour would entertain you for hours. Anyway, nearby Rodeo Drive offered a number of shops with beautiful items, and he decided to buy me a set of china at Villeroy & Boch. This was no ordinary china, though. It was an Impressionist, watercolor-type design by someone named Faure, whom the salesperson said was the great-granddaughter of the famous Impressionist painter Claude Monet. Perhaps my husband had conveyed my love of Monet’s Impressionist art, but you have to give that salesperson credit for their quick imagination. I loved the china, and I kept it in the cupboard for years, only bringing it out to use for very special occasions, like the kids’ birthdays. But I didn’t allow the birthday kid to use them – only the adults. They might break them, of course.
From the time I got the china in 1992 until we moved back to California in 2017, I used it maybe three times a year, for a grand total of approximately 75 uses. But when we moved, I gave my everyday stoneware and Corelle to my now-adult kids, and I determined that I was going to use the china for my everyday dishes. True, my careful, restricted usage of the china had preserved it – there were no broken or chipped pieces. But I wasn’t enjoying its beauty daily, and I decided that beauty was something I needed to enjoy daily.
However, the pursuit of joy and beauty is not without risk of loss. Over nearly six years of daily use, we’ve broken a bowl and chipped a couple of plates. But possessions are meant to be used up in the daily pursuit of joy and beauty, and preserving them for…whatever…we don’t know…puts life on hold and pushes our joy off into the future. Use them up and embrace the pleasure they were intended to give you. And when the last one is broken, go and buy another that fills you with joy and then use it up.