Worthy Witness

I’ve lived in several houses.  The first was a little apartment near the children’s grandparents.  I was found at a tag sale, filthy. The woman saw that I was sad, just as she was, and had to consider before paying the 25 cents I cost her.

She and her two little kids took me to their apartment and scrubbed me up.  “It’s a jewel,” she said.

That day, they went outside and picked from the early-flowering bushes, adding some berries and placed them in me so that I could brighten their scuffed table.

For several years, I travelled to the Cape in early summer where a kindly lady gave us a barn to stay in exchange for housekeeping and opening the main house.  Each day of those two weeks, my little family filled me with sea roses and shells and placed me on the makeshift table above the seawall where they ate.  We were so happy then.

My next stop was a farmhouse.  The family was growing.  There was a man in the house and more children. I sat on the dining room table, and we seemed a happy family for a bit.  As the days darkened, though, and the joy left the house, I was moved to a cupboard.  Sometimes, I was taken out and filled with fragrant flowers; no more wild flowers, early-blooming bushes or berries.  Most of the time, though, I was forgotten and I missed the days past.  Those were hard times.

We moved again. The children were gone, and we had a new generation of grandchildren.  Our home was filled with light and laughter, art and flowers, and there was a new man, a gentle man who filled me with tiny roses.  I was happy again.

Something has changed.  I’m going to a new home.  This morning the woman filled me with forced forsythia and berries from the lake, tears flowed down her cheeks.  She whispered so only I could hear… “You’re my jewel; you were a gift when we needed hope.  And now, someone else needs that love.  Be brave and kind and shine as you did with us.  Bring joy to your new home.”   And I decided that I would.