Miss Domestic

Two and a half years after moving out of my house, after moving out of my life - guess what! It appears I've reached some kind of milestone. Hah! I bought some beautiful, chunky textured, chocolatey-colored dishes today, that caught my eye, and that I really love. Yep, plates, bowls, salad plates, cups; service for eight. Silly, yes, but who cares? It made me happy. For a couple of reasons. Let me backtrack here for a minute...

I think most people who've been divorced will know just what I'm talking about when I say one of the most depressing, energy-sucking, drudgeful tasks I encountered upon moving out of my home, was the first big trip to Target or Walmart for household necessities. And when I say necessities, I mean strictly the bare bones essentials to make one's house tick. Pots and pans, utensils, silverware, glasses, a dish drainer, laundry baskets. I clearly recall making those purchases; even though I was in a divorce-induced haze of horror at even having to do it.

When you have zero enthusiasm, you just walk the household aisles and load up your cart. You really don't give much of a damn what the drinking glasses look like, or what pattern the silverware is. This is survival shopping, baby. I know I was on auto-pilot filling that first cart. The newly divorced - you can spot us easily. We're the ones with the glazed look in our eyes, pale and hunched over, pushing the big cart slowly past the spatulas and corkscrews, in a sluggish state of bewilderment.

Shopping trips in general, for me, were pretty horrific. What was once kind of fun – my spouse and I picking out furniture, or a cool tv – turned into a dismal stomach-churning chore I didn’t want to do, once I was re-single.

Because I was drained, in a hundred ways, and tired in a hundred more, I also felt physically weak. I bought stuff that was light, and easy to carry. When you're single (as in, newly divorced after 25 years), you have to unload and carry all your stuff in yourself. Into a house where there's no one home but you. Then you unpack it, put it where it goes, deal with the cartons and wrappings and trash. Tiring, very tiring.

I bought the most light-weight dinner dishes I could find. Those Corelle ones; you know what I mean. You get the whole set for about $20. The ones you can't break, no matter what. In plain white, because looking at the patterned sets made me feel even more depressed and pathetic. I figured I would replace them with something nice, sometime when I was feeling better.

I just didn't know it would take this long.

This was also something that all the guys I dated during that time had in common. In each of their kitchens, inside the cabinets, was the obligatory set of cheap Corelle dishes. In white.

I've had a couple fun parties at my house in those two and a half years. And I've had some people over for dinner, but it always required huge amounts of focus and energy, or else it was just some thrown-together hodgepodge of weirdmeal. Once my sister came to spend the weekend with me and brought my nieces and their friend. After a long day of shopping, we found ourselves at home, with no energy left to go out to dinner. I got out some leftover pizza, chips and dip, cookies in a package, and a big bag of cheesecorn, without really considering I hadn’t covered the four food groups. Or even one of the four. The girls gathered around the table; they were little and really didn’t give a rip whether they were eating hot dogs or HoHo’s, so popcorn seemed normal dinner fare. My sister looked over the spread, held back some heavy duty giggling, and said... “I see you’ve outdone yourself, as usual.” Pretty much turned into a gigglefest after that.

So, today. Today is remarkable in that apparently some of my long-hibernating homemaking skills are reappearing. Remarkable in that I bought settings for eight. Hmm. I’m feeling the urge to rifle through a cookbook. I think I see a dinner party or two, on the horizon.