What could possibly still be useful after 43 years?

My husband and I will celebrate our 43rd wedding anniversary this week. I'm not sure where 43 years have gone or if I even have a good comprehension of them. The old adage keeps creeping through my mind: The days creep and the years fly.

I was thinking, besides my husband and myself, which of the wedding gifts we received do we still find useful?

I'll have to start by exempting the fine china (Franciscan Royal Renaissance) and crystal (Franciscan Elyse) from the list. Is it still useful? Yes. Is it used? Not really. More's the pity because it's beautiful and rich and comes with service for 12 and all the serving pieces. It was bought with the idea that if we didn't get it as wedding gifts, we'd never have the money/time/see the sense of getting it at all. And that's true. It's no longer made, it's worth more than it was listed for 43 years ago, and is… beautiful. But in a drawer. Or two or three.

We still use the silverware (Oneida Michaelangelo), good stainless steel. I have service for 18 or so since my mother had it also and my sister and upon my mother's death, we split her service for 12.

There are steak knives from Neiman Marcus, with very good bone handles. I know who gifted them. As I do the porcelain hanging lamp in the living room, the one with the orange flowers. It's subtle and since we've had the thing rewired at least 3 times, it's with us to stay. The yellow Club aluminum remains in the presence of the huge stock pots which I use to make jelly. I even have an original set of sheets because they were so fine I didn't use them until recently. A card table and 4 chairs purchased with my mother's green stamps. (If the 43 years didn't date me, then THAT just did!)

There's some Corningware, a strainer, a set of avocado green measuring cups which I finally retired to the cat food box. An electric carving knife. A few utensils that ended up in our wedding share when my father-in-law's business moved.

And, of course, the grapefruit spoons. Four of them, stainless steel, serrated edge, perfect. Just four spoons from a family friend. Selfishly, we thought surely there would be something else. It was JUST four spoons. Perhaps she was giving us the greater lesson, because we use these all the time. Not the steak knives, not the Club aluminum, not the card table or carving knife. These.

Useful. Used. Remembered.

Which gift would I want?

We just finished watching the first season of Heroes on DVD. In retrospect, given the writers' strike and the impending nothingness of midwinter TV, perhaps we should have waited a while to start it because once begun, it became addictive. We blitzed through 22 episodes like there was nothing else to watch. (And admit it, there's a bit of truth in that.)

Safely, I have been taping the second season, hedging my bet that I'd like the series enough to continue it. I didn't start taping until episode 5, but absent the answer to one little question which I haven't ferreted out online yet (Just how did Peter and Nathan survive?), we would seem to be good to go and have more evening time-fillers ahead.

But I admit to feeling a bit inconsequential. All those people. All those "gifts." How inadequate am I? There are times I'd liked to have kicked-butt or listened to people's minds or walked through walls. Talking to machines and time travel, those could be tempting to abuse. Healing oneself--healing others--now there are gifts worth having. Painting the future is a bit odd, and flying is my least favorite along with starting fire and being nuclear, but finding lost people could definitely come in handy.

But if I got to choose, I'd come up with another. (And if it were taken in the first 4 episodes of the 2nd season, I haven't seen it yet.) I'd want the gift of language, of being able to listen to a few words of a conversation and undertand the syntax and vocabulary. I'd be able to communicate with anyone. Sounds like an old "Star Trek", doesn't it?

Well, haven't you always wanted to go where no (wo)man has gone before?