To be honest, I hadn’t noticed before my parents pointed it out. “Is this a garbage can lid?” my mom asked.
“We’re kind of using it as a serving tray,” I said.
“What about these?” My dad held up an empty jar.
“That, ” I said, “that is a drinking glass.”
In other words, it was a normal dinner at Terra, the co-op where I lived my happiest two years at Stanford.
One weekend close to graduation, my parents had flown down from Seattle, eager to help in the preparation of a communal dinner—our version of Sunday dinner at Grandma’s house. My parents envisioned roast beef and potatoes, gravy and green beans. Pie. Perhaps eaten from Haviland china like my grandmother’s.
Garbage can lids didn’t fit into the vision, and more than 20 years later, my parents still talk about the strangeness of it. But to me, it was never strange. At Terra, I learned to cook without recipes. I learned to cook for crowds. I learned to cook for vegans. And I learned to cook alongside people unlike any I’d met growing up in the suburbs. People with tattoos, nipple piercings and radical ideas I came to cherish.
We ate off the unconventional dishware we had because that was what we had. Nobody minded. The point was to create delicious meals—together.
I confess to cringing a bit when I hear about dorm gentrification in college. It seemed strange and a bit sad to me when my nieces and nephews lived in luxury apartments with granite countertops. As lovely as such things are, there is something infinitely better about making do. For one thing, it makes you appreciate things like matching plates when you’ve finally earned them.
They’re also a reminder of something more valuable: Even when you have nothing but food and friendship, you still have everything that matters.
Martha Brockenbrough, ’92, writes books for children and young adults, including the novel Devine Intervention.
