Broken China

Do you ever wonder about the women who left their families and friends to travel West and never saw or heard from them again?  Every now and then I do.  What strikes me the most (and what took me many years to really comprehend) is the lack of reliable mail.  If those women were very lucky, they could write and at some point during the rest of their lives they were able to send a message via someone traveling back East.  Then, of course, I think about the journey made by such a letter, and I wonder how many ever made it back to the intended recipient.  Imagine how the women felt as they set up their new home and put out the one piece of china they had been able to bring from their original home.  It was the only tie to loved ones and meant the world to them. 

Think about the way we all cherish things that were left to us by loved ones we will never see again. Do you have a special piece of jewelry, photographs, china, or handwork made by a family member?   Some of us may even have diaries and/or letters.   If you do, you know what I mean.  Most of us are fortunate enough to have several such precious things that have been handed down to us by our families. 

Now imagine you lose it all.  Fires, floods, tornadoes . . . many of us have been touched by one or another of those natural disasters.  Fortunately for the majority of us, at most it's been a flooded basement, but in the last year or two, a few may have lost much more.  Or, what I think is even worse, we lose some precious item through our own doing. 

I remember a move David and I made when a moving man swooped up a box in the kitchen that hadn't been sealed beacuse I was still putting things in it.  Near the top was a piece of Haviland china that had belonged to my grandmother.  I can still remember the sound it made as it slipped out of the box and shattered on the floor.  I also remember standing in the corner of the kitchen facing the cabinets with my hands over my face as I sobbed.  Why hadn't I thought to tell the movers the boxes in the kitchen weren't quite ready?  Why weren't they ready?  Why had something so precious to me been left until the last to pack? 

Precious things don't have to be valuable to anyone else except us.  In the grand scheme of things, I don't think that plate would have interested many other people, but it meant a lot to me.  So I understand how Esther felt yesterday, and my heart (and I'm sure yours, too, if you read her comment on yesterday's posting) goes out to her - and to any of you who have experienced that kind of loss. Things that connect us to those whom we love have meaning beyond their mere surface value. 

Broken china (as a metaphor for all emotionally significant items in our lives that we've lost) also connects us to all who have shed tears over the loss of visible reminders of loved ones or special moments.  As women we have an understanding and a visceral sense of what that loss is like for anyone.  So, Esther, not that it may help very much, I am sure that everyone who reads your comment commiserates with you and understands your feelings through shared experiences.