When I turned 30, I was desperately single. I had tried online dating sites with no luck. I worked in an elementary school with lots of older married women with kids in their teens and early twenties. 30 and single really hit me hard.
To top it off, many of my friends from college and cousins were getting married. So had my little brother. For every wedding, I bought a traditional shower gift. Towels, dishes, glasses, bakeware. I bought them all, and I really put a lot of thought into each gift. I really wanted to get each person something they would really use and enjoy. But the dishes became something mystical to me. Having the big wedding and the fancy glasses seemed to represent happiness and the perfect life. First came the glasses, then the big house, then the family. It sounds irrational to me now, but sad, 30-year-old Jen really felt that way.
So when I turned 30, I made a huge impulse buy. I went to Crate & Barrel and bought myself about $75 worth of water glasses and $50 worth of wine glasses. For a teacher who had just bought a condo, it was a big purchase. But 30 meant that I was not going to wait for my prince to get my fancy glasses.
The drinking glasses were so cool. Double insulated to prevent condensation. I only used them when company came. When it was just me, I used my clearance rack ice tea cups. And the wine glasses were so delicate. You could feel the fancy in your hand when you picked them up.
Fast forward 12 years.
Today I was washing dishes in my tiny kitchen. I put away the strainer in a very crowded cupboard right about the sink. And down came my smoothie cup, right on top of one of my super water glasses.
Smash!
Double insulated broken glass pieces everywhere. I called for my husband to help me clean it up and asked him if that was the last one. He reassured me that there was still one left.
In the seven years or so that we’ve known each other, we’ve lost about one glass a year. It got me thinking. We didn’t actually get any fancy glasses when we got married. Most of my friends and family focused on the cooking things. Casserole dishes, pots, and pans, baking dishes. They knew I loved to cook and at 36, most of the things I bought at 22 needed to be replaced. We got nice green towels to replace my very girlie purple towels and light blue sheets to replace my pink ones. While my husband liked my super soft towels and sheets, he really appreciated the new gender-neutral colors. My friends and family put the same thought and consideration into gifting that I had for them. And they knew I wasn’t really a “fancy glass” kind of girl.
And here we are. A small, but comfortable house, two great kids and very happy. We are down to one fancy water glass. The delicate wine glasses are wrapped in the basement because there just isn’t room for them in our little kitchen. But still, we found the magic without the fancy glasses.
Photo by fred_v 