Mommy Bloggers: A Plain White Mug

The following essay was written by Shelley at Generation Exhausted. Variations of this essay, originally written in 2001, have appeared in Woman’s Day magazine and the anthology A Cup of Comfort For Women in Love.

It’s the most uninspiring piece of crockery you could ever hope to find in your cupboard. This plain, white coffee mug, not even a cheesy slogan or brand name to grace its side, cost a dollar at Kresge’s eighteen years ago.

It was the first purchase we made when we set up housekeeping. Between us, we had little: a towel or two, our own personal “stuff,�? and three plastic milk crates—real milk crates, not the kind Rubbermaid makes. That was the sum total of what we brought to the beginning of the story. That, and a whole bunch of hopes and dreams.

A romantic, if somewhat foolish pair of teenagers, we landed in that tiny northern town, in that one-room apartment, and began. Enter the plain, white mug. There was no money for anything fancy, but buying dishes seemed the thing to do; when you buy dishes together, you’re an official grown-up couple, right?

And we dearly wanted to be grown-up, and together. We talked of building a life with kids and houses and pets. Neither of us had a job or goals, or even a bank account. We figured as long as we loved each other, the rest would take care of itself.

The plain white mug once had a partner, lost somewhere or maybe broken during one of the several times we moved. Perhaps one of our three daughters broke it or maybe it was left behind on a camping trip. Somewhere in the reaches of the past, it just disappeared.

Other things have disappeared too. Our naïveté, our impetuousness, the romantic notion that love alone can see you through. Early on, still believing that wishing made it so, we stood before a minister, finally, and promised things we couldn’t imagine. Neither one of us could have explained what honor and respect meant, yet we vowed to do those things.

Through sickness and health: each one of us has taken turns sitting by the other’s hospital bed, conferring with doctors, fetching fresh glasses of water. We didn’t know that sickness could be soul-sickness, less obvious but so much more insidious and damaging.

For richer or poorer: we borrowed the money for $30 wedding bands. We knew we could do poor; we didn’t know that more money would bring more problems. Riches were unfathomable, and losing those riches through our own mistakes made the struggle worse.

And we grew up. Together and individually, we met challenges, formed opinions, faced our demons. The road has been a rocky one: three kids, two separations, angry words, and selfish acts. Dreams faded into the background; surviving became the ultimate goal.

This little mug has held thousands of cups of coffee, traveled hundreds of miles unscathed. It’s faced the elements, left out on the deck by a child after a juice break. It’s held hot tea inside to ward off the chill of an evening, water to wash down medicine. It’s been here, through sickness, health, riches, and poverty. It lasted.

Five years ago, the white mug sat in my cupboard, while he had his own kitchen several blocks away. The cup was battered and scarred, a few chips in the surface, but still it does what it was meant to do. He noticed it as he poured us coffee one day, and it sat there between us as we talked about our relationship. Trying to decide if we were ready to give it one more go-round, one more chance to find out if love could see us through. We had dreams again, adult dreams this time. We knew we could build a life together; we needed to find out if we could stop ourselves from tearing it down again.

Whether the worst is over or yet to come, the mug now sits in the cupboard we share once more. It dares us to prevail in the face of despair, to weather the storms and the battles, to live with the scars and the chips in the surface.

And it only cost a dollar, eighteen years ago.