The Someday List

Tiffany and I don't have a dining room table. We don't have a dining room, first of all, so a dining room table is out of the question. But we don't have a table to eat at, really. We eat off our laps or leaning over the coffee table. When we have company, they do the same. We did have a table. When we moved to Los Angeles and into our first apartment together, we bought a simple kitchen table at a Russian thrift store in West Hollywood. It was nothing special, but I liked the look of it, and Tiffany indulged the purchase even though it didn't come with chairs (we found those later--a pair with cushions from a Goodwill and a plain wooden pair someone left on the side of the street). We carried the table home to our new apartment, laughing as we teetered down the sidewalk past the beautiful homes with the jasmine plants we loved and the avocado and lemon trees we coveted. A few months later, we ate our first Christmas dinner at that table, just the two of us: our tiny tree in the background, dressed in the holiday sweaters my grandmother sent, Dr Pepper and champagne in hand-me-down wine glasses, salmon, broccoli orzo and a spinach, walnut, dried cherry, gorgonzola salad.That table served us fine. But we don't have it anymore. We sold it, along with most of the rest of our used furniture, when we moved to San Francisco, where we bought mostly all new used furniture--but not a table to eat at since the new apartment was a bit too small.

A table to eat at is on our "someday list." That's the list Tiffany and I mentally compile whenever we find, as we go about our daily lives, something we'd really love to have: bicycles that we will actually ride (I want one with a basket), a coffee pot with an automatic start so that Tiffany can wake up to fresh brewed coffee, a bed frame, a couch without an orange Mike & Ike stain or a gigantic gash that has been sewn up with a slighly off-color material, chairs that don't date to the 1970s in a bad way, a garden, a house behind which the garden will go, a flat screen television, a dog, a bed for the dog at the foot of our bed frame...

The list goes on and on and on, and, because of the nature of the things on the list, it's fun to make. We don't really need anything on our someday list (although a dog is non-negotiable--I don't care if we ever get a bed frame). Plus, the list reminds us that we're moving toward something, or some things, and that feels good too. Someday we'll live in a house and not an apartment that's attached to other apartments. Someday we'll have a couple of tomato plants (for me) and a few varieties of lettuce (for Tiffany). Together we can make a salad. Someday we'll have a t.v. that plays sound out of both speakers when we watch movies, and someday we'll take our dog for a walk and beg her not to pee on our garden.