Inhaling the scent of wood, she creaks open her Christmas chocolate bark box filled with wine corks. She patiently moves each wine cork to a bigger glass jar. Her collection is growing, and it is overflowing with memories.
A sense of nostalgia rushes through senior Lizette Lara as she reads the tiny yet neat, handwritten notes on the side of each wine cork, signifying the joys in her life that she shared with her family.
“When I transferred [them] from the chocolate bark box over to the jar, I took a minute to look at [each of] them,” Lara said. “I was just kind of reminiscing about the moments that happened last Christmas or at New Year’s or when my brother got accepted in[to] his dream college. Just seeing those is kind of crazy, because when we think back to 2020 or 2021, it doesn’t feel [that long] ago, but the memories make it feel like a lifetime ago.”
With her family’s occasional get-togethers over dinner during the COVID pandemic, Lara said she wanted to have something as a memento for each occasion.
“It’s kind of a funny way that my collection started,” Lara said. “We had all these dinners as a family, and then I started to come up with the idea [that] we should add a nice little message [to] the occasion that we’re having.”
So Lara started to keep the wine corks whenever her family opened a wine bottle during their occasional reunion. Slowly, her collection built up through the months and it finally caught her family’s attention.
Upon finding out about her new collection, Lara said her family became really interested in it and started to save the wine corks used during family dinners to contribute to the collection.
“They actually were pretty excited about it,” Lara said. “And ever since, whenever we have a celebratory dinner, they know that we have to keep the cork. Or, whenever we go out to restaurants to celebrate, [we’d ask] the waiter to give us the cork because normally they take it, but [now] we have it to have that as a memento.”
To Lara, each cork in her collection is important in its own way, for it holds her emotion and serves as a milestone.
“Each cork has a special memory attached to it, like Christmas, New Year’s, college applications, birthdays and visits from family,” Lara said. “[There is] a memory attached to each one and it has grown to become such a big part of my memory about something I have done [as well as] my room decoration.”
Lara came up with the method of noting down each celebration on her wine corks. She said it was a great way to quickly remind her of the specific event that the cork carries and who she’s sharing it with.
“I usually would write straight on the side of the wine cork. Sometimes it wouldn’t actually be a very important event—just a New Year’s Day or a family dinner—but I [would] ask [my family] to write their own names onto it,” Lara said. “So it’s now not only the event that they visited, or [that] we had this dinner together, but it’s also their addition to my work. They’re an addition to my collection.”
One of Lara’s most recent additions was about her college application period. To her, this is a very memorable event since it represented her hard work.
Out of her nearly 15 wine corks collection, Lara said her current favorite wine cork is the one she bought from her Italian trip with the TWINNING activities between Liceo Classico Telesio and Bellaire High School.
“We went on an excursion half an hour away from the city, and among the souvenir shops, I spotted right away a special cork that had a porcelain top with an illustration of the area, and I just knew I needed to get that one,” Lara said. “Though, it wasn’t like something we [could] drink, it was just a memory of the [entire] trip. I’d say that that one has now become a special addition to the collection.”
For Lara, the collection is something that only her family knows and shares.
“If any [of my] friends came into my room, they could kind of spot the jar on the corner,” Lara said. “It’s kind of just like a fun fact that some people know and some people don’t know. It’s just something I keep more to myself rather than telling everyone about it. To me, it’s something mainly in my family and my extended family circle.”
Lara looks forward to further growing her collection even after her graduation. She is excited for memories from yearly meetings like New Year’s celebrations to something more personal like her first visit back home after leaving for college.
“Now that I’m graduating and going to university, there’s going to be a lot less of those special dinners, [though] I want to continue growing [my collection],” Lara said. “New Year’s celebrations, for sure, will always be a yearly addition. I do hope that [memories such as] when I do come home [from college], and when I do see my family, will also be an addition to that jar. It does hold a special place in my heart.”
