I got married in a cow pasture on a day I don't remember. It was around Christmas two years ago and we wanted to make sure we got our tax deduction for next year. And it was cold. Eight degrees. The wind off Wisconsin's Rush River stiffened our fingers until they proved useless as we tried to put the bands on each others fingers.

This is crazy. Lets just say I do and go to the restaurant, I whined to Bill. Please. I'll tell you all the reasons I love you when my heart thaws. With that my friend Paulette, our Justice of the Peace, pronounced us married, and our witnesses trumped off to their still warm car.

I am not a romantic.

So when my mother called me two weeks ago to say she felt compelled to buy me twelve place settings of china, I was not enamored. Wedding China? I mean is there any other kind of China? Did she happen to remember the day I got married? We would like to know so we could order the certificate from the court house. Could I opt for the removal of this wisdom tooth instead? How about a transmission for our twelve-year-old mini-van? A fifty gallon hot water heater for our new house? No.

I fumed. I pictured myself as Norman Rockwell's plump grandmother carrying a roasted bird on a china platter. I would become her. I would know the history of each food holding object in my house. I would love more things. My success would be measured by the quality of my serving pieces.

My mother has four sets of china wrapped up inside her massive hutch. My grandmother has three-hundred twenty-two teapots in her family room. As their daughter I grew up turning over saucers at garage sales looking for the words Prussia and Occupied Japan. I know china. And like an Indian bride refusing her dowry, I scoff at china's illusion of status.

Never the less, on Saturday I drive to Dayton's. (I hear my tranny give its chronic thud as I shift into park.) I hate Dayton's. I hate the perfume women, and the Marketplace women and the infants apparel women and the undergarments women. I hate the two buttons left on my barn coat. I hate my sock-less feet. I hate my chin zits.

I stuff my hands in my coat pockets and navigate through the men's wear into the dinnerware section. I stand in between the illuminated Spode and Wedgewood display boxes and focus on not tapping a plastic stand with my thighs and elbows. I stand very still. I can hear this lisping guy in one of those everyone got one for Christmas ribbed turtle neck sweaters and a green ASSOCIATE SINCE 1998 tag explain to another green tagged ASSOCIATE SINCE 2002 why they can't just return the casserole lid. Its sold as a unit and it needs to be packed as a unit and returned as a unit. They should know that. We have always had a policy about returning the entire unit.

I move my eyes side to side across the shelf in front of me like feather dusters. Five piece place settings grouped by manufacturer. Exceptional values. One hundred fifty dollars a place setting. Four hundred forty-eight dollars a place setting. They look the same. White plate. Metallic rim. They look like prenuptial agreements. Paint swatches. Something you just agree upon.

I recognize Old Country Roses by Royal Albert. A splatter of fuschia and peach roses highlighted like a Thomas Kincaid print. The colors are garish, but at least they are colors. This is the most popular china pattern in America. You can find Old Country Roses accessories at T.J, Maxx. The bride that chooses this, the Dolly Parton of dinnerware, has seven bridesmaids. She and her fiancé bought Olin Mills studio portraits with the oil paint swirl paper. He drives a Lincoln Navigator. She collects vintage Barbies.

But I have already pegged my dinnerware identity. I see myself as an Evesham Gold by Royal Worcester type. Asymmetrical depictions of pears and apples and ripe plums hanging on snipped branches frame each dish. The colors are muted and sophisticated like a forty-year-old woman's wedding dress. Beautiful and understated. My English friend Pat has Evesham Gold in her dish rack. She eats Lean Cuisine in these plates. Do I like the potential of everyday use? Do I want Bill to eat a can of Hormel Chili in an apple bowl? Am I too good for Royal Worcester? Not good enough?

The under wire in my bra is cutting into my fleshy underarm. I need to back out of this department and exit Dayton's. I need to go home and collect myself. I need to reconcile this elitist ego and this poverty level income.

In the van I unclasp my bra and slide it out of the sleeve of my shirt. The new me, the flower loving me, the gooshy me that wants to read Tennyson, the me that identifies with a stuffy retail illusion, contemplates status and china and my lineage. What will I be saying with these dishes I will use once a year? Oh my silly mother, insisting on buying me an entire set of Lilac Lane Platinum by Royal Doulton. Or maybe; sure I'm a Che Guevara lovin' Quaker hippie-lala, but I come from something. I just do this little paycheck to paycheck routine for spiritual cleansing. My bourgeois sense of style comes from a long lineage of union stomping hotel owners. My great-grandfather owned The Saint Paul Hotel. This whole WIC coupon thing is T.E.M.P.O.R.A.R.Y If I wanted to do the whole J. Crew body on the Restoration Hardware leather ottoman I just twitch my little trust fund baby nose and voila. I am transformed.

Couldn't you tell by my china?