The Truth About The Crate & Barrel Box

When my husband and I got married, we didn’t have a pot to piss in. Or at least that’s how my mom oh-so-eloquently described us to my aunts and uncles when they inquired about which gifts from our wedding registry would be the most helpful. My husband and I had both just finished graduate school and had rented a cool old Victorian house in L.A. for next to nothing. Since our savings were dwindling, it was a huge relief when my husband got hired at a local school just two days before our wedding. The honeymoon was cut short as we tossed my wedding dress into the back of his Honda and booked it back to L.A. just in time for him to start his first day of school.

In our house, we had a futon, a bookshelf and a 13” television set.

After my husband went off to his first day, I unpacked wedding gifts from Crate & Barrel boxes.

Now we also had champagne flutes with hand-painted stems, everyday china, crystal candlestick holders, a killer knife set, CorningWare, a roasting pan, a blender, a mixer, new dishtowels and a coffeemaker.

We did not have a dining room table.

We did not have a bed.

We did not drink coffee.

We had a wok, nonstick cookie sheets, airtight food storage containers, mixing bowls, fancy pots and pans, bath towels and a gravy boat.

We did not have a cookbook.

We both had a graduate degree.

I did not have a driver’s license.

When I’d finished unpacking all the boxes, I shoved them into a pile in the laundry room.

We did not have a washer and dryer.

I updated my résumé and contemplated what to make for dinner. Just like any other girl who grew up in Southern California, tacos were the first meal I ever learned to prepare. So tacos it was. Making tacos meant I wouldn’t sweat too much in a house without AC when it was a sweltering 90 degrees outside.

I put on a sundress with spaghetti straps and walked through the late afternoon smog and heat to the nearby grocery store to pick up all of my ingredients. When I got home, I chopped onions and grated cheese. I sliced tomatoes, shredded lettuce and mashed avocados for guacamole. I sorted the taco toppings into matching bowls and lined them up along the kitchen counter. I pulled a freshly washed 10” cooking pan from the cupboard and went to marinating my ground beef and taco seasonings.

Our house smelled like a home as the scents of dinner cooking took over.

We still did not have a dining room table.

I dragged the biggest Crate and Barrel box I could find from my pile in the laundry room and set it up as a makeshift table. I folded linen napkins in the fancy way I’d learned to fold linen napkins in the restaurant I’d worked at in college. I set silverware aside our plates and stacked salad bowls on top. I arranged the crystal candlestick holders, stuck some flowers I’d picked from the front yard into a vase and lit the candles just as my husband walked through the front door.

As newlyweds, we sat down at my makeshift table and toasted my husband’s new job. We lingered over dinner as though we were at a fancy restaurant overlooking the canals of Venice.

Before I got married, my wise best friend (who had nine months on me in the marriage department) told me that love was about small moments, not big expressions; it was allowed to be little not grandiose. While my husband and I have come a long way since living in a nearly empty house with no furniture, we still don’t live large. Instead we live simply to be able to continue to do what we love. He teaches. I teach. He makes art. I write. When those times come that I wish we had a bigger house or a swanky car or a month-long European vacation, I remember that taco dinner atop our Crate & Barrel box to remind myself of how rich I really am.

Oh, and I still make tacos for my husband every year on his first day of school.

We do have a dining room table now.


© Copyright 2012  Marisa Reichardt. All Rights Reserved