I’m sitting at the dining room table with my laptop, a cup of coffee and a creamy white serving bowl next to my laptop.  As is my routine these days, I got up early to work out on the elliptical machine and then went to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee and unload the dishwasher before getting my family up.

As I was putting the dinner plates in the cabinet, I noticed the stacked serving bowls on the next shelf.  On the bottom of the stack was a bowl I have had since I was in high school.  It is creamy white Nikko brand from the “Classic Collection”.  The bowl is shaped like a stop sign — is that octagonal?  And has a ridge pattern just below the rim.  In another cabinet, there is a matching serving platter in the same pattern.  Somewhere along the line, there was a third oblong shaped serving dish.

Why did this particular serving dish catch my eye this morning?  Well, first off is its longevity.  The dinner plates are only a few years old and we’ve already chipped most of the set and completely broken all but three of the cereal bowls.   This Nikko serving dish is definitely quality to last so long.  And it has been a long time indeed.  These plates survived high school and college and graduate school and marriage and kids  now approaching college age.  And standing there at the cabinet, I thought of all the time that has passed and all the apartments and houses this plate has been in and all the meals for friends and family it has served.

And then I remembered how I got the dish in the first place.  I had opened my first savings account for my babysitting and math tutoring money.  The bank was offering a promotional incentive to encourage people to make deposits.  A set of serving dishes could be earned.  And earn them I did.  I felt so grown up and planful.  I wasn’t even out of high school and I was saving for my future and envisioning my first apartment.  I probably paid 4X what the dishes were worth and it took me years to earn them.  But I did earn them.  And I still have them.  And I still use them.