Quite often my mother would ask me to set the family table with "the good china." As is often the case, china was a family heirloom, passed down from generation to generation and held in the highest regard. My mother ordered the table to be set with the china quite frequently, but I never questioned these occasions. I assumed they were just my mother's desire or momentary whims and did what I was asked.

One evening as I was setting the table, our neighbor Marge dropped by unexpectedly. She knocked at the door and Mom, busy at the stove, called to her to come in. Marge entered the large kitchen and, glancing at the beautifully set table, remarked, "Oh, I see you're expecting company. I'll come back another time. I should have called first, anyway."

"No, no, it's all right," replied my mother. "We're not expecting company."

"Well then," said Marge, with a puzzled look on her face, "why would you have the good china out? Gosh, I'd never trust my son to handle my grandmother's dishes. I'm so afraid they'll get broken, I use them only twice a year, if that."

"Because," my mom answered, laughing softly, presumably because she found it silly that Marge should use her china so infrequently, "I've prepared my family's favorite meal. If you set your best table for guests and outsiders when you prepare a special meal, why not for your own family? They're as special as anyone I can think of."

"Well, yes, but your beautiful china will get chipped," responded Marge, still not understanding the importance of the value my mother had assigned to esteeming her family in this way. "And then you won't have it to pass on to your children."

"Oh well," said Mom, casually, "a few chips in the china are a small price to pay for the joy we get using it. Besides," she added with a twinkle in her eyes, "all these chips have a story to tell, now don't they?" She looked at Marge as though a woman with a family of her own should have known this.

Marge still didn't get it.

Mom walked to the cupboard and took down a plate. Holding it up, she said, "See this chip? I was 17 when this happened. I'll never forget that day." My mother's voice softened and she seemed to be remembering another time. "One fall day my brothers needed help putting up the last of the season's hay, so they hired a strong young man to help out." Mom paused, then continued. "My mother had asked me to go to the hen house to gather fresh eggs. It was then when I first noticed this very handsome young man. I stopped and watched for a moment as he picked up the large and heavy bales of freshly cut hay and slung them up and over his shoulder, tossing them effortlessly into the hay loft. I tell you, he was one gorgeous man: lean, slim-waisted, with powerful arms and shiny, thick sandy-blonde hair. He must have felt my presence because with a bale of hay in mid-air, he stopped and turned and looked at me, and just smiled. He was so incredibly handsome," she said slowly, running a finger around the plate, stroking it gently.

"Well, I guess my brothers took a liking to him because they invited him to have dinner with us. When my older brother directed him to sit next to me at the table, I nearly fainted. You can imagine how embarrassed I felt because he had seen me standing there staring at him. Now, here I was seated next to him. His presence made me so flustered, when he asked me when I was to graduate, I got tongue-tied. I don't remember what I said!" Suddenly remembering that she was telling a story in the presence of her young daughter and a neighbor, Mom blushed and hurriedly brought the story to conclusion. "Well, anyway, he handed me his plate and asked that I dish him a helping. I was so nervous that my hands shook. When I took his plate, it slipped and cracked against the casserole dish, knocking out a chip. I handed the plate back to him, hoping he hadn't noticed."

"Well," said Marge, unmoved by my mother's story, "I'd say that sounds like a memory I'd try to forget."

"On the contrary," countered my mother. "As he was leaving the house he walked over to me, took my hand in his and laid the little piece of chipped glass in my palm. He didn't say a word, just smiled that incredible smile. One year later I married that marvelous man. And to this day, when I see this plate, I fondly recall the day I met him." She carefully put the plate back into the cupboard -- behind the others, in a place all its own. Seeing me staring at her, she gave me a quick wink. Aware that the passionate story she had just told held no sentiments for Marge, she hurriedly took down another plate, this time one that had been shattered and then carefully pieced together, with small droplets of glue dribbled out of rather crooked seams. "This plate was broken the day we brought our newborn son, Mark, home from the hospital," Mom said. "What a cold and blustery day that was! Trying to be helpful, my six-year-old daughter dropped that plate as she carried it to the sink. At first I was upset, but then I told myself, it's just a plate and I won't let a broken plate change the happiness we feel welcoming this new baby to our family. As I recall," she said, "we all had a lot of fun on the several attempts it took to glue that plate together!"

I was sure my mother had other stories to tell about that set of china.

Several days passed and I couldn't forget about that plate with the chip in it. That plate had been made special, if for no other reason than because Mom had stored it carefully behind the others. There was something about that plate that intrigued me, and thoughts of it lingered in the back of my mind.

A few days later my mother took a trip into town to get groceries. As usual, I was put in charge of caring for the other children while she was gone. As she drove out of the driveway, I did what I always did in the first ten minutes when she left for town: I ran into my parents' bedroom (as I was forbidden to do!), pulled up a chair, opened the top dresser drawer and snooped through it, as I had done many times before. There in the back of the drawer and beneath soft and wonderful smelling grown-up garments, was a small, square, wooden jewelry box. I took it out and opened it. Inside were the usual items, the red ruby ring left to my mother by Auntie Hilda, her favorite aunt; a pair of delicate pearl earrings given to my mother's mom by her husband on their wedding day; and, my mother's dainty wedding ring, which she often took off as she helped do outside chores alongside her husband.

Once again enchanted by these precious keepsakes, I did what every little girl is wont to do. I tried them all on (as I had done so many times before), filling my mind with glorious images of what I thought it must be like to be grown up, to be a beautiful woman like my mother and to own such exquisite things. I couldn't wait to be old enough to command a drawer of my very own and be able to tell others they could not go into it!

Today I didn't linger too long on these thoughts. I removed the fine piece of red felt from the lid on the little wooden box that separated the jewelry from an ordinary-looking chip of white glass -- heretofore, completely meaningless to me. I removed the piece of glass from the box, held it up to the light to examine it more carefully and following an instinct, ran to the kitchen cabinet, pulled up a chair, climbed up and took down that plate. Just as I had guessed, the chip so carefully stored beneath the only three precious keepsakes my mother owned belonged to the plate she had broken on the day she had first laid eyes on my father.

Wiser now, and with more respect, I cautiously returned the sacred chip to its place beneath the jewels and replaced the piece of fabric that protected it from being scratched by the jewelry. Now I knew for sure that the china held for Mother a number of love stories about her family, but none quite so memorable as the legacy she had assigned to that plate. With that chip began a love story to surpass all love stories, now in its 53rd chapter -- for my parents have been married now for some 50 years!

One of my sisters asked Mother if someday the antique ruby ring could be hers, and my other sister has laid claim to Grandmother's pearl earrings. I want my sisters to have these beautiful family heirlooms. As for me, well, I'd like the memento representing the beginning of a very extraordinary woman's very extraordinary life of loving; I'd like that little glass chip.

¬1995. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Values from the Heartland by Bettie B. Youngs. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the written permission of the publisher. Publisher: Health Communications, Inc., 3201 SW 15th Street, Deerfield Beach, FL 33442