I discovered Peet's coffee when I first started taking dance lessons in Harvard Square during the summer before my junior year of high school. I was enrolled in an intensive program that ran Monday through Friday from 9 AM until 4 PM. We had a lunch break mid-day when we could explore local cafes and stores in the square. After drinking Dunkin Donuts' Coffee Coolattas for months, I was pleasantly surprised that the Peet's version of the slushy drink actually had coffee in it-- not just coffee flavored syrup or bottom of the carafe coffee, but fresh shots of espresso. It was love at first sip.
I got an espresso machine for Christmas the year I discovered Peet's coffee and began buying espresso by the pound from the store in Harvard Square. They kept bins of beans that they'd grind while you waited, offering you a free coffee with a one pound purchase. I would leave the store, paper bag in hand, and suck Freddos through a straw even in the winter time. I'd finish the drink before I made it to the end of the platform at the train station and feel the kick from the espresso shots immediately. If I'd already had my four shots of espresso and lunch time coffee, the Freddo would be enough to set my hands shaking for the rest of the day. Even though I've cut my coffee consumption down to a single mug every morning, I still brew the darkest roast of Peet's coffee and savor every sip. Several years ago Peet's started selling pounds of coffee in most supermarkets, so I don't have to make a trip to Cambridge just to buy a pound, and even if I did, I wouldn't need to take one of these old paper bags with me.
Years before I tried Peet's coffee for the first time, I tried on my first pair of pointe shoes. The whole ballet class met together at the store for the fitting. The employees working gave most of us the same brand and model shoe. They cost as much as a pair of sneakers, but barely lasted a few months before the box wore down and the soles flapped across the creases formed from bending the arch of the foot to the tips of the toes. With the new shoes, I bought lamb's wool to wrap around my toes and a new pair of tights, also overpriced. They fit neatly into the purple plastic bag pictured above.
I can't remember the first time I shopped in Celtic Weavers, but I'm sure it was after I started dating my Irish ex-husband. I frequented Boston's Faneuil Hall in the summer. Merchants set up rows of carts along the cobblestone streets and businesses bustled indoors. On the first floor of the centrally located building, one can buy just about every type of food. I never bought anything to eat, but I loved walking from one end to the other, squeezing between the crowds of people, and inhaling the different scents.
I always wanted to go into Celtic Weaves, but was afraid someone would notice I was Italian and look at me like I didn't belong. It was a ridiculous thought to think that someone shopping in one of the most heavily trafficked tourist spots of Boston would be turned away or looked at funny for her heritage. My fear was especially unfounded since despite the fact that I come from a family that is exclusively Italian I look Russian or something else from a northern, cold climate. When I started dating my ex I went in figuring I'd just say I was shopping for someone else if I was questioned. I bought him a wool scally cap with a patch inside proclaiming it was pure Donegal wool. He lost his hat one night after drinking too much, but I held onto the plastic bag it had come in for close to a decade. Logic must have escaped me long ago.
When we'd been dating for a few years, my boyfriend started joking about how he was going to propose to me in a shocking and memorable way. No kneeling on one knee and reaching into his back pocket to pull out a tiny box. He wanted something surprising since we talked openly about getting married from when we'd only been together for two months. We thought for sure we were soul mates, meant to be together forever. Maybe we were soul mates, meant to teach each other lessons we couldn't have learned on our own, but we were not meant to be together forever.
For a while, he kept saying he was going to propose to me by bursting into the bathroom while I was sitting on the toilet. I made it clear that I would be horrified and decline his proposal if he ever did something so embarrassing.
He proposed to me on New Year's Eve, just days before he would return to Germany and less than two months before deploying to Iraq. We'd been going to his best friend's house to celebrate the new year for years and it was only natural that we'd be there again the year he proposed to me. We hadn't been there long before he said he was going to go to the kitchen to fix a drink-- my first clue that something was different since fixing a drink usually meant pulling a beer from the fridge and biting the cap off with his teeth. A few minutes later he yelled from the kitchen for us to come quick because he'd cut himself-- second indication that things weren't right since if he did cut himself he'd just wrap his dirty flannel over the wound and let the blood seep through the fabric the rest of the night. His friends and I walked to the other room to see him. He was holding a giant wad of paper towels in his hand and blood was puddling all over the floor. His friends stood in the doorway watching as he held his hand and walked in circles, one of them had a camera ready even though they never took pictures. I knew he was about to propose and tried to mentally prepare myself to act surprised. I admonished his friends for standing around and doing nothing, walked into the kitchen, took his hand in mine, and lifted the bloody paper towels. Beneath the wad of cloth was the ring box, still in the white cardboard, smeared in the fake blood he'd bought from a local iparty. I couldn't get the second box out and ripped the side after several awkward seconds that felt like minutes of struggling. When I lifted the top and looked inside at the ring I was genuinely surprised, not that it was a ring, but that he hadn't bought me something covered in emeralds and Celtics knots (I never liked my deep green birthstone and I wouldn't have felt right wearing Celtic knots.) He asked if I'd marry him, I said of course, we kissed, and his friends applauded from the doorway. The ring was too big and rolled around my finger, but I didn't care, I was engaged.
When I showed my mother the ring the next morning she said, "I hope it's a very long engagement." I don't think we had any idea then when we'd get married, Iraq was all that was on our minds. As the thirteen months of his deployment passed though, we started planning the wedding for when he returned. I'd be graduating from college the next spring and wouldn't be able to live with him on base unless we got married, so it only made sense to rush things along.
Since he was away and wouldn't be back until a week before the wedding, I bought both of our bands from the same jeweler where he went for my engagement ring. My ring didn't come as a set and the band had to be made to match the high mound of white gold that surrounded the diamonds. The square holes that they'd filled in still showed on the inside and filled up with dirt and soap after months of wear. The woman who sold it to me said I could still fill it in with diamonds if I wanted to later. She said happily that maybe my husband would buy me one for each of our wedding anniversaries. I didn't want more diamonds, or even a wedding band for that matter. My husband had bought me a solid band with the Gaelic words for soul mate engraved around the outside for my nineteenth birthday. I wore it on the finger with my engagement ring and thought it would work just fine as a wedding band. He insisted that I buy another band though, and encouraged me to get diamonds. After spending four years in retail watching wealthy women flaunt their giant rings on thin fingers when buying books they probably never read, I didn't want diamonds or anything flashy. I bought us both simple, solid gold rings and, of course, kept the bag they came in.
Although I'm not yet ready to get rid of my wedding rings, it was easy to crumple up the plastic bag and shove it into the recycling bin. I often wonder what divorced women do with their old rings. Do they wear them on their right hand instead as a statement of independence or has that fad faded? Selling it at a pawn shop or jewelry store just doesn't feel right. Does that mean someone else will buy it for his future wife? Will he know that it was once worn by someone whose marriage failed or do the jewelers clean the rings and sell them as new? Can you buy refurbished rings like you would a TV or laptop? "With this refurbished ring I thee wed..." is about as out of place as the Elizabethan language in modern vows. Maybe they extract the diamonds and melt the gold to form a fresh band, to begin again from something that never seemed to fit in the first place.
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