I’m a hoarder. I love collecting stuff. Most of all, I love collecting tiny pebbles. I used to have loads of them. Picked up mainly at beaches. Different shapes, different textures, different sizes. Each one, unique. That’s what I liked best about them. I liked them all, but none of them were exactly the same as another.
One day, when the pebbles grew a little larger in number than I could manage with ease, I got a beautiful glass jar to keep them in. With the pebbles all piled up together, the glass jar seemed a pleasant sight to look at, with the different colors within it, reflecting light at different angles. I placed it right where the first rays of the morning sun could hit it, and the first thing I saw each morning when I awoke. And I smiled each time I looked at it. Slowly, but surely the jar began to fill up. More pebbles of more colors, shapes, sizes and textures. Each time, I thought one more wouldn’t fit into it, I’d just shake the jar a bit, and the pebbles within would move, to accommodate the new one.
Then one day, two things happened. I got a new pebble to add to my collection, but before I got to add it to the jar, I found out there were going to be guests coming over. The guests included children, which included a lot of running around, and into things, and my first thought went out to my pebbles. I wasn’t very keen on handing out my pebbles to them yet either. So I took the jar and I placed it on a very high shelf, where none of the little hands could reach for it.
All was well for most of the time, until my worst fears came true, when one of the kids, running amok (why aren’t there leashes for those things? :-P) headed straight for the shelf. In my minds eye, I almost saw it before it happened, but was dumbstruck. In slow-mo I watched the kid run into the shelf, and then bounce off its door and run out of the room, without breaking pace, getting away from the other kids behind him. I stared up where the jar, shaken from its position wobbled a bit, then stilled dangerously onto the edge of its base, before making its journey downwards.
I lunged for it, trying to protect it, but from across the room, my move didn’t do much good. I halted, suddenly, and closed my eyes just when it hit the floor. But I could not shut down the sounds that followed. The glass shattering, the pebbles scattering, the gasps of the people followed by their sudden silence. I opened my eyes, to the blurry (I was NOT gonna cry) mess in front of me. Each precious pebble I’d so carefully sought and guarded, there amongst bits of glass. I tried to salvage a few, but the jar had shattered into so many little pieces, I couldn’t touch a pebble without getting any glass in my fingers. My bloodied fingers finally made me stop, And I resigned to the fact that I could never have those back again.
Walked out this morning/ Don't believe what I saw/ A hundred billion bottles/ Washed up on the shore/ Seems I'm not alone at being alone/ A hundred billion castaways/ Looking for a home
I have that one new pebble that I hadn’t yet added to the jar. Maybe I’ll start over, or maybe I’ll add it to the trash bag with all the others.
