Collecting Dust

The Vera Wang stemware was the only “extravagance item” that we registered for 7 ½ years ago when we got married. I remember the expression because after an hour the salesgirl convinced me that every bride deserved a little extravagance. Everything else on the list was practical: pots, pans, flatware, towels, a bedspread, etc.– sensible things. Things we still use today.

But this stemware, I just had to have it.

When we didn’t receive the full set as gifts, Brian and I fought about using some of the wedding cash to complete the collection. I won that argument. And the day after we returned from our honeymoon, we were proud owners of the 2003 Vera Wang by Wedgwood Glassware Collection.

We brought it home to the apartment we were living in at the time and put it in a box for safe keeping until we moved to a more permanent residence. Three moves and seven years later the whole collection was still in that box, unopened and in its original packaging. I know, because I found the box this weekend when I was cleaning.

At first I was just going to dust around it and, I don’t know– leave it there for another seven years? Then I realized how ridiculous this whole situation was and in a moment of minor hysteria I liberated the whole collection. Freeing each delicate piece from its crypt of plastic and foam wrapping.

And right there, among ruins of the cardboard tomb, I filled one of the wine glasses with Cabernet and toasted to progress.

It’s funny (and maybe even a little sad) that it took my ridiculous relationship to this stemware to remind me that value doesn’t belong to things, but rather to how we choose to interact with them.

~Stacey