A new symbol for our new life

We continue to take baby steps toward our new future. Sometimes it’s as simple as organizing the garage (thanks Tracy!), finding one more item to purge or finalizing yet another decision. It feels good to continually recognize progress, even if it does seem like a very slow pace at times.

As I mentioned in my last post, one of the household items we recently liquidated was our everyday dishes. We had a bit of an emotional attachment to these – we had searched for just the right dishes for months. But they were stoneware and therefore big and heavy, so we knew that we’d have to let them go eventually. As destiny would have it, an opportunity arose that allowed us to help a good friend while still receiving a fair price in return. It was a win-win for both parties and it just felt right, so we sold our dishes earlier than we expected. But in trying to look at the glass half-full (oh wait, we sold those too!), this gave us an excuse to begin shopping for our new home! Now this is fun!!

We weren’t really sure what we were looking for, other than they needed to be lightweight and sturdy, but not appear cheap. The only options we could come up with were Corelle or melamine, both of which immediately feel on the cheap side to me. But we looked at them anyway. We first went to Target and didn’t see anything we liked; then we went to the Corelle store. There were a couple of patterns we could live with, but nothing with the ‘it’ factor. We checked out Bed, Bath and Beyond but they didn’t have anything and we weren’t sure where else to look locally, so we started searching online.

We looked at several different websites but still weren’t finding anything that excited us. Then we discovered that Pfaltzgraff, the brand of stoneware we had, also carries a line of melamine dishes. Immediately we landed on a pattern – dragonflies – because the pattern was fairly simple and it was nature-related. They just spoke to us and I began to wonder about the symbolism of dragonflies (I’ve come to believe that everything has a meaning!)

Dragonflies symbolize different things for many different cultures, but every meaning seemed like it was appropriate for our situation. Here are a few of the representations:

Dragonflies often represent renewal, positive force and power of life in general.

Dragonflies are a symbol of the sense of self that comes with maturity.

As a creature of the wind, a dragonfly frequently represents change. It’s iridescent wings are incredibly sensitive to the slightest breeze and so we are reminded to heed “where the wind blows”.

Dragonflies are also creatures of water, which carries a symbolism relative to the subconscious, or dreaming.

Further symbolic meaning can be observed by the dragonfly’s mode of transportation as it skitters across the top of water surfaces. This implies that our deeper thoughts are surfacing and we must be mindful of the outcome we wish to have.

For Native Americans, dragonflies are often symbols of change, communication from the elemental world and messages of enlightenment and wisdom. The dragonfly’s lessons are to give thanks for food, discard illusions that prevent people from restricted ideas and actions and changing negative habits into positive ones.

And as a dragonfly lives a short life, it knows it must live its life to the fullest with the short amount of time it has.

Hmmm, let’s summarize: renewal, change, dreaming, maturity, harmony, positive thinking and living life! Yep, it all fits! So we ordered the dishes. I still wasn’t sure if I’d like the melamine, but the online pictures looked nice so we figured we’d give it a try. We could always return them.

Last night when we got home from work there was a big box on the front porch. I couldn’t wait to rip it open. We are very pleased. We thought the background was white, but they’re actually an off-white which I think makes them look richer. Hopefully they’ll still look good after everyday use.

So now we can officially say that we’ve bought the first item for our new home...now we just need the home!

Picture of our new dishes :)