Today, we had a sad, yet semi-momentous event: we broke our first plate.
It was like I was watching it in slow motion. JG put the two plates not quite far enough onto the counter when they toppled off, took a piece of the garbage can with them, and crashed on the floor. One didn’t survive the fall. He did his best to save it, but even if it seems like things are falling in slow motion, they actually aren’t. JG felt kind of bad about the dish, and I’m sure it didn’t help when I fake-wailed, “But that was a wedding plaaaaaate!!!”
Now, I’m not exactly broken up about this because I knew this would happen at some point. I was almost positive that it would be me breaking the [insert fragile item], since I’m much klutzier than JG, and I just tend to drop/run into/trip over things much more frequently than he does. I suspect it’s some sort of depth perception problem. It makes me sympathetic to JG feeling bad about breaking it, and the plates didn’t cost too much to the point where it won’t break the bank to replace it, so this breakage really isn’t a big deal in the scheme of things. Am I a cool wife, or what?
At the same time … it was a wedding plate. JG and I didn’t get formal china because I couldn’t rationalize making our guests spend over $100 for a place setting that we might only use twice a year, especially if that money could be better spent elsewhere on our registry to get us things that we could use on a regular basis. Like an iron. Or silicon oven mitts. Anyway, instead of both "formal" and “everyday” dishes, we got two sets of “everyday” dishes that we use everyday, believe it or not. I’m ashamed to admit that, yes, I knew that I wanted these dishes since I was about 12, but not because I had visions of wedding plans dancing in my head – it was because I loved their mix-and-match economy and funky colors. I chose the very sensible white and cobalt, chosen expressly because I thought food would look appetizing on them and despite the fact that green is my favorite color (“You can’t put green food on green dishes!”). If I ever had an occasion for fancy dishes, I planned on adding cloth napkins and candles to a table with the white setting, and I’d be all set, right?
Is it pathetic that I really love these dishes? They’re solid, simple, and they’ll never go out of style, and they were among the first gifts I opened at my bridal shower. My registry inspired a gift from JG’s grandmother of her original candlesticks and salt and pepper shakers; we wouldn’t have been able to buy them anywhere, and we love having them on display. So in a way, the loss of this one cobalt dinner plate is a tiny loss of one of our wedding gifts, and that’s a little sad. But maybe this is a symbol of our new-ish marriage. You know, we’ll go through tough times and not everything will look shiny and new, and we won’t always been nice to each other…
On another note, I think this is a perfect time to start adding to my collection. I can’t be stuck with SEVEN cobalt plates, can I? I don’t do well with odd numbers, much less odd, prime numbers of things! Forget trying to divide those up! Ooh, so many colors to choose from… Maybe turquoise … or shamrock … or yellow …
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