The Power of Placemats

Eleven years ago, before my husband and I were married, his car broke down outside New Paltz and we spent a couple of hours in a diner waiting for a friend to pick us up. We drank coffee, ate lemon meringue pie, and planned our lives together on the back of a paper placemat—you know the kind, the ones with pictures of fancy cocktails you'd never get in a freeway diner. We wrote things like "get married; get health insurance; lose ten pounds; finish college (for me); make music (for him)."

My husband put the placemat in the cigar box where he keeps odd things: a roll of mercury-head dimes; bagpipe reeds; a small, square card from a dry cleaner that reads "Button Holda." Years later, after we'd moved to Wichita, he found the placemat, and we were surprised by how many of the goals we'd accomplished. Since then, every few years we find a restaurant with paper placemats and make a new list. Sometimes goals from previous placemats get carried over—almost every placemat has "lose ten pounds"—or else we find that our priorities have changed, and goals we didn't accomplish aren't something we're interested in doing anymore.

I can't explain the power in writing down things. My rational side tells me we internalize the goals we've created together and subconsciously work to achieve them. But that takes all the magic out of it. I like to think there's something bigger going on. When I was a kid, every year I'd make a list of what I wanted from Santa. I never got everything, but Santa always seemed to know which things were most important. And even though I had a sneaking suspicion that Santa was my mom and dad (my dad's distinctive handwriting on the gift tags was a clue), I let myself continue to believe. It's like that now, except my husband and I play Santa to ourselves, making our lists and figuring out what we really want and need, and then surprising ourselves when we get what we asked for.