Kyran has a lovely post about marriage on Notes to Self. I particularly like this imageI don't have real wedding silver to shine up for dinner. Ours was not that kind of wedding. Our guests were a ragtag band of gypsies from the bar where I worked at the time, and our families aren't the silver-bestowing kind. But I'd like to think if we had, the pieces would look well-used by now: tiny scratches, a dent here and there from being dropped on occasion (or flung), perhaps a missing piece we've learned to do without. It would bear the mark of wear and tear, the patina of something precious, durable and worn.
I hope my marriage does have that sort of patina. I think it does, although I doubt the scratches or missing pieces are visible to anyone else. I love the analogy, but that's not why I'm writing this. I was really struck by the phrase "our families are not the silver-bestowing kind".
My family is the silver-bestowing kind. My mother and grandmother collected English and American sterling and both had a full set of sterling flatware given when they were married. My mother started collecting extra pieces of her sterling for me when I was an infant, and was crushed to find out I didn't actually like her pattern all that much. There was a bit of a fuss when my grandmother gave me hers instead (and Mom is still happily using her own stuff, which will probably go to my brother and sister-in-law at some point). Sam and I started married life with 12 place settings of sterling and several small open stock pieces. I grew up surrounded by silver, and it was deeply pleasing to have my own collection to arrange and polish and use whenever I wanted.
My enjoyment came to an puzzled end when we invited some of Sam's graduate-school friends to our apartment for dessert and coffee. We'd been married nine months and living together for about two weeks. It was the first time we entertained. The couple lived downstairs in the same building and I anticipated a lot of of socializing back and forth - but that never happened. We had a nice evening, and that was that. They never invited us over and they were decidedly cool to me when we met at department events. I figured they just didn't like me, until a year or so later when I heard through the grapevine that they were afraid to invite us over. They were also newly married, but their dishes were mismatched Corelle hand-me-downs and their flatware was discount-store stainless. After our silver-and-china evening, they figured I would look down on them.
That was the my first real encounter with class differences. Sure, I went to college with people from very different backgrounds, but we were all living in dorms and eating pizza and I was insensitive enough not to notice how much some of my friends were struggling. I've never paid much attention to clothes and no one I knew had a car. I'd always been a social outcast to some degree until I got to college, when I finally found a group of like-minded friends. I had my moments of feeling isolated and left-out but that wasn't new. I assumed everyone felt the same way, and was entirely blind to my privilege: as a legacy admission to a fancy-pants school, and a third-generation Fancy Pants student, I felt fundamentally at home in a way many of my friends never did. I didn't know that at the time. In truth, I didn't really know it until a few years ago, when I started listening more closely to what my friends were telling me about their experiences.
I continue to learn about class, and my own privilege still blinds me much of the time. I'm working on it. I still own that silver (more of it, actually, since my mother has been generous) and I still enjoy using it. I don't know if there was anything I could have done differently all those years ago. I wouldn't have minded eating off Corelle with stainless forks. I really needed friends then, and it still hurts to think of the missed opportunity. I try to remember that every time I find myself making assumptions about people based on what they own. The patina Kyran references is the one that counts; it's about the relationship, not the silver.
5 comments:
Beautiful post Jay. Especially since I know you form the inside, I think, not at all from the outside until more recently. And I have never seen your sterling.
Making assumptions about other people before you get to know them seems your theme as much as is class differences. I think that making assumptions about other people is a tool useful initially to organize one's universe. There is an awful lot of data to assimilate about people and the world, after all. Remember that those assumptions can be incorrect is the hard part.
e all kinds of assumptions about me that they will likely never have the opportunity to test.
Years ago, a friend of mine who comes from generations of upper class money complaining about a workman doing her custom cabinets...her complaint was that he kept asking her if it was okay if he did something.
My observation about class:
Upper class: You have the right to an opinion, you have the right to be heard and you expect a response.
Upper class: You expect civility. I realized I had become upper class when I once had to file for unemployment. Those clerks, I thought, treated me like dirt. No, those clerks treated me like a working class unemployed person.
Upper class: You can use resources...information, the Web, the phone directory, friends with connections.
Upper class: You expect your child's life will be a good, healthy, well educated one.
Upper class: You "own" systems: the educational system, the financial system, the governmental system.
Class, in my mind, is less about money than it is about expectations.
After 33 years, I still have the Corelle and the JC Penney's flatware. I wouldn't have had a problem inviting you over and serving you with those pieces, I'm still using it for my guests. I do have a friend, however, who has criticized my glassware (it is pretty shabby) so I have told Terry to never offer her a drink when she comes over.
Right on!!
And I agree with miracle mom as well.
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