June 2008 Calendar Picture and Story

Friday
Jul 30, 2010
1:59:57 PM

Welcome

Calendar Photo and Story For June 2008

Usually our daylilies bloom a month earlier. It has been so dry that I guess that's why they are so late this year. They have so many buds and the blooms each last for days so the display lasts for weeks. These plants come up from roots consisting of many interconnected bulbous pods and not a single bulb. Every year, a month or so after they are finished blooming and seeding, we mow them flat and then weed the bed. They come back from their roots as strong as ever!

I love that little vase I borrowed from my mom. It was interesting to, for once, carry the vase outside and arrange the blooms as part of their natural setting. Though it doesn't show in the photo, that vase has a most interesting construction. I hope you'll take a moment to read my story below...

I don't know when or where mom got that antique vase, but I know it was a favorite, and growing up, I remember it always featured in a place of honor. When I was 10 or 11, it resided on a little table in the corner where the kitchen met the living room. Right about this time of year, well a month or so earlier, I was arguing with mom about something I wanted to do while she was mopping the kitchen floor. Whatever it was I wanted, she didn't want me to do it and had said "NO!" for about the hundredth time. As I ticked through my demented 10-year-old logic and presented my argument over, and Over, and OVER again, she grew more and more frustrated. It was late in the afternoon. I had just finished my piano practice, or as my dad called it, "constant banging on the keys!", she was cooking dinner and had spilled something... So, she was mopping up the mess while pots steamed and bubbled on the stove.

Somehow, to oblivious me, this was JUST the right time to argue my case. Trying to deal with me, in mid-stroke with the mop, mom turned to say "No." again at the exact moment she was pulling back and the end of the mop handle knocked that little vase off the table onto the wet terrazzo floor where, in the slow-motion of my shock, it broke into the 7,265,342 pieces I had time to count! All of this was about six too many things coming at mom who dropped the mop, knelt, and began gathering the dripping shards, some about rice-sized, which were clinging to each other and the floor.

She didn't yell at me as I expected. Instead she sobbed, "Oh Mike! Look at what you've made me do!" as she used one of the larger pieces to collect the tiny. It was a perfectly understandable human reaction, but, probably because I had never seen her cry before, it shot into my perfectly selfish brain and I realized, for the first time, that what I did affected other people!

Mom cleaned up the mess, threw away the shards and finished her mopping and dinner while I wandered off to my room to ponder. Later that night, while the family was watching TV, I snuck into the kitchen and fished all the pieces out of the garbage. I washed them off and hid them in a shoebox in my bedroom. We didn't have "Super-Glue" in those days so I used Duco Cement which had to be held tightly until it dried. Over the next couple of weeks I glued that vase back together. I did the best I could but, as you can see from the above photos, I couldn't fit everything perfectly or even well. Fortunately there was one side where, from a distance, you couldn't see all the cracks.

I wrapped it in paper towels in its box and presented it to mom on Mother's day. She was pleasantly surprised, but beyond that I couldn't read her reaction and figured it would probably wind up in its box in a closet somewhere. Instead mom found a place in a corner where the bad sides were hidden and put it back in use.

I guess its a sign she liked my gift that in the 40 years since then, the vase, usually with a bouquet of silk flowers, has always been on display somewhere in the house! Even when it was featured prominently as it was when I went to borrow it, I don't think anyone has ever noticed it was a vase with a tale to tell.

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