Nothing gold can stay.

I told him nothing’s the same after six months. All the good stuff’s gone.

THE GOOD CHINA BY PAMELA SUMNERS 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 96

We dug out the “good china” from the Jacobean hutch that had once belonged to my parents. It wasn’t really that good, and maybe wasn’t even china. We’d picked it up about 15 years earlier from Pier 1 because my sister was visiting for Christmas. (I’d lost my 1920s-era Limoges grapevine pattern in a breakup theft by a woman who insisted she was my wife despite the absence of any actual or symbolic ceremony.)

We set the “good china” plates on our particularly ostentatious gold chargers that we placed on blue velvet place mats. We wrapped sterling napkin rings around the “company” silverware and set a centerpiece with greens atop a red velvet runner.

We set this very fine table and told our son we were going to eat our parental Christmas dinner upstairs and leave him to the massive table with his girlfriend. They both were 18, and our son had for a coup…