Domestic Bliss

Isn't it strange what can make a person feel more like an adult?

I am now the proud owner of a brand-new set of dishes.  That I picked out.

That's never been true before.

My first set of dishes was a gently-used, almost-complete set that my mother scored for me, along with a few pots and pans, at a church sale.  My then-future husband and I didn't have much in the way of household items--like many college students, most of our possessions were books and video games!--so they were a welcome upgrade from the incredibly cheap, flimsy plastic dishes I had been using until then.

My second round of dishes came when my grandmother moved from her own place into a home.  We helped in cleaning out her apartment, and she insisted that we take anything we needed or wanted  with us.  I claimed her everyday dishes, but of course by then, having had them for so long, some had been broken years before and not replaced, and the ones that were left were often chipped or cracked.  They were beautiful, much nicer than my church-sale dishes, but they still weren't really mine.

The other time we might have gotten dishes--our wedding--well, there was no wedding china to be had.  We didn't have a very large or elaborate wedding, there was never any talk of a gift registry or any of the traditional gifts a bride and groom receive.  My parents did get us a Kitchen-Aid stand mixer, which I love and adore and use constantly...but that was the closest to dishes that we came.

So here I am, taking another small, domestic step towards adulthood.  It felt really good to throw away all of those damaged, unmatching dishes.  Even if I felt kind of silly when I wrapped some of them up in my old bathrobe (which also got replaced this Christmas) to take them down to the dumpster!