Posted July 28, 2023 (Updated Nov. 1, 2026)
When my husband and I got engaged, we did what most couples eventually do before their wedding day—we created a wedding registry. All of our hopes and dreams lived just one registry gun click away. I pictured us enjoying family dinners on the Warren Kimble folk art plates we finally chose (after looking at what felt like one hundred options) and pouring thick gravy from a silver boat on holidays.
Some of the options I selected mirrored my childhood memories, like the wooden salad bowls. Growing up, I stared at the woven patchwork squares and noticed how the pumpkin-colored French salad dressing coated the bottom. I settled on a similar set, but one in which the main salad bowl perched on a tall stand. The set felt elevated but still gave a nostalgic nod to my childhood.
Over two decades later, we live in a house overflowing with homewares, and those same bowls look at me longingly through the glass door of the dining room hutch since they have rarely enjoyed use aside from maybe a couple of occasions. Each time we declutter, I can’t seem to bear to let them go. How could a simple set of salad bowls mean so much?
I know I am not alone in my attachment. Only a couple of months ago my daughter fell to tears when she saw our worn lawn mower waiting in the driveway for a parts man to pick it up and take it away forever. It had served us well, but it was time for it to move on. While we saw a grass-cutting machine past its prime, she saw herself in her early years sitting on her father’s lap proudly driving on our lawn and around the small cul-de-sac making memories to last a lifetime.
The memories I made while creating our wedding registry were not yet real, but they felt like they were. When I saw the bowls, I pictured myself as a stay-at-home mom with a handful of kids by my feet, much like my own mother. I didn’t know that years later I would be a working mother with one child who had no time to hand-wash wooden bowls that were not dishwasher-safe.
In the spring, I took to a staring contest with my salad bowls. Maybe if I looked at them long enough the answer would arrive as to whether they should stay or go. They had survived many trips to the thrift shop or recycling center thus far. Even when Covid hit, and I had to clear my hutch to make room for my daughter’s school books and supplies while she homeschooled for a year, the bowls traveled just to the basement, out of sight but still within reach should I decide I need them. Perhaps I could keep just one, I said, hedging my bets, but the bowls and I both knew I was fooling myself because even that one would remain a relic on a dusty shelf. Besides, if I held onto one, would I be holding onto something that was never really mine—a dream without life?
For my daughter, the lawnmower was an important connection to her father. For me, the bowls represented what I thought it was to be a mother. It’s not easy having the courage to say goodbye to parts of ourselves and make room for new dreams. I took a photo of the bowl (pictured at the top) to honor my dreams and remind myself that life has something in store for me that I could never have imagined. I hope someone else is enjoying the set, which I eventually let go of, in a way I never could.
Does your life look different from what you imagined? What unexpected blessings have you discovered?