Crystal Clear

Today is my, sorry, our 15th wedding anniversary, traditionally known as the crystal anniversary. I wonder, had we stayed together, what we might have done to commemorate 15 years. Such speculation is pointless; there's no way to know what might have been, but I do have 15 years of what was, and it wasn't all bad.

We, like most couples, registered for gifts. We registered for all types of things we would never buy for ourselves but thought we needed since someone else would be buying. Like china and cloth napkins and a toasted sandwich maker and, yes, crystal. Waterford crystal wine glasses with a gold rim. Many people bought these for us and I carefully put each one of them away in our china hutch. I could look through the glass doors at that sparkling stemware and feel like a grown up married person.

One January morning, a few months after the wedding, a violent earthquake hit the San Fernando Valley where we lived. Our house was in ruins. The house pitched so dramatically that it flung open cabinets, closets, even the fridge, hurling the contents across rooms and onto the floor. In shock, I wandered into the dining room. The china hutch doors were closed but the crystal wasn't inside. Those doors, too, had been thrown open, jettisoning the contents onto the floor and then slamming shut again. On the rug lay shards and jagged fragments of Waterford crystal. I picked up the broken base of a glass, the label still on it. I hadn't even had the chance to drink out of my grown-up married glasses.

Among the rubble and tipped over inside the china hutch, a few whole glasses remained which I have kept and used and treasured ever since. So it is fitting to me that this is our crystal anniversary. Like the Waterford our marriage ended up mostly broken, but there were good, solid pieces, too. And I have those to keep.