My mother received an enamel casserole dish as a wedding gift. It is green and shiny. All the comfort food of my childhood came from under that lid. Homemade macaroni and cheese, baked ziti, and taco casseroles were served and seconded. Leftovers ladled out for lunches, and the pot left to soak in the sink. I recently inherited the table of my childhood, from my parents’ kitchen. It stands in my apartment now, stain worn off the chairs and table slightly scratched. It was the table of my mother’s childhood too, in a different state, a different decade—the same comfort food and dinner prayers.
My future mother-in-law has a set of storage canisters she glazed with her then-fiancé at a paint-your-own-pottery place. She stores tea in the smallest one. When Ryan and I spend the night, she always has a cup prepped for me when I wake up; just add hot water. We chat in the kitchen in our PJs and plan the day. I drink my tea out of a mug emblazoned with dinosaurs and “RYAN” in dotted capitol letters.
When we got engaged, many of our engaged and married friends warned us that registering is the worst. “It’s overwhelming,” they said. “You won’t use half of it,” they said. “It takes forever,” I was told. Again, and again, and again.
Ryan and I are registering now for our wedding next fall. I want a Dutch oven like my grandmother’s—large and well-seasoned, perfect for soups and pasta sauce and roasts. She inherited hers from her mother. She remembers it on the stove when she was a child. I am hungry for insulated cookie sheets and a nine-inch round cake pan, perfect for birthday celebrations. I want a stand mixer with a big glass bowl that can go right in the microwave to melt butter before mixing and a food processor with a fine chopping blade so I can make my grandmother’s broccoli salad.
As I carefully compare brands of Dutch ovens and casserole dishes and serving ware, I choose the colors and patterns and textures while envisioning the roast I will serve on Sundays, football in the background and beer in the fridge. I can picture little hands grabbing hot cookies off metal cooling racks and birthday cakes served on that special pedestal dish. I envision nights with my girlfriends, sitting on the floor laughing into glasses of wine.
So far, I haven’t found it overwhelming. I’ve found registering to be relaxing—a way to daydream about our marriage, not just the one wedding day that so much of my time and energy and excitement is currently geared toward. It can be challenging to spend as much time talking about our marriage as we do about our wedding. That one day where everyone we love is gathered together to break bread and share wine in honor of us will be gone before I can fully absorb its beauty.
What will remain, after the wedding, are family dinners and friends-giving at that old table from my grandparents. Everyone will leave, and instead of doing the dishes, we will cuddle on the couch that used to live in his parents’ basement. We are building our baby family and supportive community from the ground up, starting with an open front door. The table is heavy with a love language as old as time, served on gifted dishes.
Our little sanctuary of an apartment might not always be the place we call home, but it is the perfect place to start.
