I think back to friends I had back in the day. But I have pieces…bits of the good things, reflections of Light. In those moments of time, it felt like I’d be working with them forever. I think back to people I used to work with. The longer I live, the more I realize how important it is to capture snapshots of pieces along my journey. This is becoming all too frequent of an exercise. I was quieted as I watched in stunned silence. Without needing to see the dead and wounded, I knew each piece of glass was only a token for what the barrage of bullets had done to the flesh and bone of the dead and wounded. Having first heard about the terrorist attacks in Paris on Friday night, I was taken by the image of all the pieces of broken glass for as far as the eye could see. “You can’t make new pieces, but save them and you can glue them back together.” “ Grandma, why don’t you just buy a new one. Watching her extract the broken dowel rod, she then proceeded to paint a new bit of wood with glue and gently slide it back into place. It held.ĭuring one of our visits, I came bounding into the kitchen to find her bent over the wooden plant stand she’d laid out on the kitchen table like she was in surgery. She had glue for the cow’s tail that had come off the salt shaker and for the handle my dad broke off her favorite coffee cup when he was a little kid. Glue for the knob on the post at the base of the stairs. Are there glimmers in any of that worth saving?Īll of which brings me to what I learned from my Grandma Mabel. If you’ve ever lost your job or lived through a plant closure or been on a Paris street on a Friday night, you’ve suffered breakage. Love affairs that should never have been, divorce, all manners of abuse and hatred? Lots of broken pieces. Are a few photos or a bronzed pair of baby shoes that valuable?īreakage applies to other parts of our lives. Why save them? Why do we instinctively come back to our homes after a tornado, flood or fire to pick through the rubble. But what if there were another option? Which brings me back to saving the pieces. Whether it’s on a store shelf or in my cupboard, broken pieces must be bought or thrown out. Why else would I instinctively feel my arms stiffen at my sides like a wooden soldier? I don’t want to break anything. Talk about a targeted piece of advisory wisdom! But it works. Why else would they feel the need to post signs with the warm fuzzy message, “You break it, you bought it”. Local merchants since the Stone Ages have seen guys like me walk into their stores. Collectively, all these seemingly random pieces served to teach me to be careful around glassware, close the door behind me and turn off the lights on my way out.īut it isn’t just me. “ Were you born in a barn?” Or how about, “Do you work for the electric company?” Ring any bells?…oops, that’s another one. See if any of these ring a bell with you. When I stopped to think about catch phrases, it wasn’t long before I had assembled quite a list of similar little pieces of wisdom I hadn’t even realized were in play. Good advice for someone like me who’s been described as a bull in a china shop. “ Save the pieces.” Even now, it is one of the catch phrases that has stood the test of time.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |