Broken...

Today I took everything off the sweet little antique hutch in the kitchen. This hutch is purely for decoration, and I have some of my favorite things on it. I aimed to wash all those treasures, then rearrange a bit to freshen things up. While I had everything off, the hutch got a good scrubbing, and I pulled it out and cleaned the wall and floor behind and under it.

One of the things I carefully washed and dried was a sweet little white glass bird figurine. I bought it shortly after I moved to Maine, and it is something that never failed to make me smile a bit when I saw it. It was white, made of a bisque type porcelain, and appeared to by lying down, as if it were in a nest. It had a long bill like a wren, and when my friend gave me a wee little birds nest she found I tucked that bird into it and it was just, well, cute. As I carefully cleaned it I thought, "If this broke I'd never find another like it." I put it on a cloth to dry while I cleaned other things.

A bit into my project I grabbed a cloth to dry a tureen, and saw, out of the corner of my eye, something arch through the air. A delicate tinkling marked it's landing on the tile floor.



And there you have it. Broken into too many pieces to even contemplate getting the glue out. I was sad for a moment. Then I remembered a blog I recently read. A woman from Australia put all her worldly belongings in storage and took a year or so to travel about. She began a business in England, and decided to sell EVERYTHING she had stored, (except for a few small personal items.) She told of her struggle of letting go of all she had. She told of how easy it was to move about in the world when she had so few possessions holding her down.

As someone who cares deeply about my "stuff," this was good food for thought. I need to practice letting go. Fly, little bird!