Grapes


When I was a kid, there was a heavy glass dish that only came out on special occasions. It was amber with an iridescent finish that reminded me of gasoline in a puddle. In my memory, the inner bowl about about ten inches across and the outside was bulged and rounded like a bunch of grapes. 

Families change and when my Mum went back to school I had to look after the kitchen and laundry and lots of other things. Everyone was stressed out and stretched. If something wasn’t done, there was a ripple effect and a lot of hollering. 

The grape dish always needed to be washed by hand. It was bulky and the finish likely wouldn’t handle the dishwasher. I remember how it felt when the knobs of the grapes slipped through my hand and it fell to the floor. It was in pieces and I was sure Mum would be devastated. I was devasted in advance. I cleaned it up and put the pieces aside. Maybe it could be fixed. Maybe I was dead meat.    

The phone rang later and my guts churned when I heard Mum’s voice.

“What dish?”

“The yellowy gold one, the heavy one that looks like grapes...I’m SO SORRY!”

And then she laughed and laughed and told me she was glad.

WHAT?

It had been a wedding gift, she couldn’t remember who had given it to them but she had always hated it. She was relieved and so was I. For a minute, the tension broke and I learned something important. 

Sometimes the things we believe are precious really aren’t at all.

Eventually, I also learned that stuff is just stuff and that we need need to challenge our assumptions. 

I wonder what would have happened to the dish if I hadn’t broken it.  Would Mum still hate it? Would I still think it was special? Would it live at my house and cause me grief at every holiday? Would it live at the back of an abandoned cupboard? Would someone else have dropped it? What would they have learned instead?

The ice pack pictured above always makes me think of the grape dish. 

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