How does the dream version of "mama" differ from the real one in Everyday Use?

In Alice Walker's "Everyday Use," Mrs. Johnson's dream is
to be reunited publicly with Dee on a television talk show, like Johnny Carson.  There,
she will have tears in her eyes as her daughter pins an orchid on her
dress.

She says:

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You've no doubt seen those TV shows where the
child who has "made it" is confronted, as a surprise, by her own mother and father,
tottering in weakly from backstage. (A pleasant surprise, of course: What would they do
if parent and child came on the show only to curse out and insult each other?) On TV
mother and child embrace and smile into each other's faces. Sometimes the mother and
father weep, the child wraps them in her arms and leans across the table to tell how she
would not have made it without their help. I have seen these
programs.

Sometimes I dream a dream in which Dee and I are
suddenly brought together on a TV program of this sort. Out of a dark and soft seated
limousine I am ushered into a bright room filled with many people. There I meet a
smiling, gray, sporty man like Johnny Carson who shakes my hand and tells me what a fine
girl I have. Then we are on the stage and Dee is embracing me with tears in her eyes.
She pins on my dress a large orchid, even though she has told me once that she thinks
orchids are tacky flowers.

In
reality, "Mama," as you say, is a stout woman who wears overalls and can kill a hog with
her bare hands, a far cry from the talk-show dream version.  More, Mama doesn't talk
much.  Johnny Carson wouldn't like her terse, utilitarian
language.

Mrs. Johnson knows that her idealized self is a
reflection of Dee.  In some ways Mrs. Johnson wants to be that dream mother, if only for
an instant.  Dee would want her mother to be like that too.  Dee feels she has elevated
herself above her country roots and would want her mother and sister to do
likewise.

Mama
says:

In real life I am a large,
big-boned woman with rough, man-working hands.

Mama is too grounded in reality to
fall prey to these dreams.  Her strong work ethic and dedication to domestic duties--to
the everyday use of her family's cultural identity--trumps any short-lived idealized
false images of the self.