I loved my daughter’s shower last month, hosted by my dearest female friends and family, my younger daughter and maid of honor and a bestie-bridesmaid. Presented as a “T” for Talia tea party, it was a joy to watch the bride-to-be get “steeped in love,” as the invitation promised.
It was a heartwarming day of sisterhood, along with the traditional showering of blenders, bread makers, roasters and toasters – all wrapped and ready to be unpacked for the couple’s life together. These are the tools for the bread to be baked, the brisket to be braised and, if it’s in the stars, the children to be raised.
Middle-aged appliances make you think
When my cousin and I perused Talia and Justin’s registry, hoping to order something the bride and groom would truly love before someone else did, we found ourselves saying, more than once, “I could really use that.” I even looked up other registries belonging to couples named Talia and Justin – I couldn’t believe there were any – just to see what they had chosen. It was like having a personal shopper: no scrolling reviews, no agonizing comparisons – these brides and grooms had already done the research.
After decades in the trenches of holiday meals, summer barbecues and milestone birthday parties, something became clear: the women who brought a lifetime of kitchen, dining-room and entertaining experience to this shower were the ones who really needed it. Truth be told, it’s us long-marrieds who are a little short on silverware.
When I logged off and surveyed my own kitchen – the surviving shower gifts, dishes, glasses and cutlery accumulated over more than three decades – it was appalling. I closed the kitchen and took inventory.
The everyday dishes I registered for when it was my turn to be showered with sets of plates, wire whisks and measuring cups, are now chipped, cracked, missing and possibly stolen. I have considered filing a missing soup bowl report.
The dinner plate pattern is called Garden Harvest by Mikasa – a fruit-and-leaves motif that peaks on Thanksgiving Day and then disappears into seasonal irrelevance. It worked up north, where we raised our family in Randolph, Morris County – a hilly, woodsy bedroom community. They don’t work at the shore, where every plate seems to be light blue, nautical blue, or festooned with shells and starfish. Lack of a shore motif aside, my youngest daughter is attached to the plates that served her chicken nuggets as a child, so they stay.
The cutting truth
The cutlery situation is worse – a mash-up of forks and knives from my mom, my own Macy’s purchases and later Marshall’s expeditions. One fork somehow made it all the way to Boston, where my great-niece now calls it the “Lisa Fork.” I plan to send her what’s left of the set and start over.
Stemware scaries
And don’t open my cabinet of drinking glasses. There are eight water glasses, four juice glasses – the fifth now holds Sharpies – and plastic, Disney-themed cups from when another niece interned at the Happiest Place on Earth. There’s also plastic cups from Billy Joel’s last concert at Madison Square Garden and a tall glass mug of my husband’s from the Bicentennial in 1976, with a handle that protrudes and takes up entirely too much room.
Now we’re approaching the nation’s Semiquincentennial – its 250th birthday – and I need room for a new commemorative glass. How can I break it to him? Maybe it just breaks…
Not everything is old. Enter a dozen “après pickleball” plastic glasses, a gift from the bride-to-be’s future in-laws when they visited us. Hopefully they didn’t linger, hunting for the perfect wine glass. The cabinet doesn’t so much display glassware as it chronicles the entirety of my married life.
Every time over the years that I thought about replacing a set of dishes, one of my kids needed something instead: a semester of Gymboree, a travel cheerleading uniform worn once, or a real live dog because “you could tell the mechanical one wasn’t real.” Plates can wait. Apparently, a real live dog cannot.
Taking care of your things: Not a bad idea
My wedding china, in the lovely Lenox Eternal pattern, has survived intact. Rimmed in gold, it was gifted, place setting by place setting, by my mother’s friends. My mom splurged on the gold-rimmed glassware – champagne flutes included – and my dad covered the Yamazaki, stainless-steel flatware, even though they were hosting the wedding.
My three children weren’t around for the shower and they’ve always complained about washing the china by hand, which has never been part of my routine for our rank-and-file kitchenware. “Let’s not haul out the good china” has become the pre-holiday refrain, especially when it’s “just us.” If hand-washing my everyday plates had been part of daily life, perhaps I wouldn’t be in such a sorry state now.
overseas. Oh the embarrassment of being one bowl short of three matching bowls.
Some don’t judge a bread maker by its beauty
There’s not much you can do about a dented, scratched food processor, but some people appreciate the magic an appliance can create.
My future son-in-law developed a fondness for my homemade challah, which begins in my circa-1993 shower bread machine. Back when he and my daughter were just “seriously dating,” I joked that if things worked out, maybe we’d get them a bread machine as a shower gift.
“No,” he said. “I want yours.”
It was my first hint of my future son-in-law‘s sense of humor – and his priorities. He’d rather have challah from my old machine than a mediocre loaf from a fancy new one. Ironically, that beloved bread maker died shortly before the shower, where I had intended to heirloom-gift it.
All of this got me thinking: why don’t retailers offer 20th-, 30th-, or even 50th-anniversary registries? As a diligent reporter, I reached out to Bloomingdale’s and Crate & Barrel for comment but never heard back. I took the silence as a comment, assuming they believe long-marrieds are more interested in cruises and toys for grandchildren than monogrammed towels.
But the owner of Findz, a Margate gift and housewares shop, put it plainly: “Long-married couples could use a lot of things. Styles and their lifestyles have changed in the past 20, 30, 40 or more years.”
The brides and grooms in our lives will be showered with the practical and the extraordinary. Somewhere along the way, those of us who have cooked, hosted, washed, chipped, replaced and made-do for decades realized we’re due for a little domestic do-over.
Lisa is an advertising copywriter (think “Mad Men” without the men), journalist and columnist. Claim to fame: Lou’s waitress for four teenage summers. For column comments, story ideas, or to get on her “quote list” for future columns: redshoeslzs@gmail.com.
