bonds & insecurities

A man had himself some savings. He invested as he thought best in the given moment. He tied much emotion into those decisions and carried his doubts with him like a small fortune. He had been told to put away for those rainy days, and again to make his talents grow.

He met a lady on a street corner, a vendor of baubles. She was old and weary. She said, "if you have Time, you spend it," as he paused over her useless sparkling wares with their arbitrary price tags, reflecting neither material nor labor.

She gave him a substantial bauble because he gasped that it was his birthday, when he asked her if it was Monday or Tuesday, and what Time? and she answered it was Saturday the 23rst of September, the beginning of Fall.

He was so surprised that he dropped it, and the glass shattered beneath the cart. To his embarrassment, she sauntered out, with all the folds of her skirts and belly, right then, to take the shards into a metal dustpan.

"I'm so sorry," he stammered seeing that he was still clumsy at 70 as at 7.

She smiled with every enviable wrinkle holding up her kerchiefed forehead. Not a trace of annoyance passed.

"I will melt this glass into a new bauble, with new particles of sand. It will be the 156th incarnation. It is stronger and more beautiful every time."

He hesitated unsure of his impulse. The work tent was right next to the cart.

"You'd like to see it done?"

That was when he realized the heat that emanated from that back quarter, the workshop.

They stepped around the white painted wooden wagon, into the tarpaulin structure that was essentially a teepee allowing coverage from the elements and a hole in the roof top for smoke to rise out.

She set to the task of heating the glass in the fire and dipping it into the pipe, finally beginning to blow out a steady breath that stretched the liquid into a solidifying form, spherical as she exhaled, and then expertly cut it with a tool of metal.

The globe was already pleasant to the touch, and she lowered it into his waiting hands, warm to his callouses. He cradled the bauble like a newborn, in awe of the perfect imperfections of foreign particles not fully burnt out in the process. He shuddered involuntarily. It was even more beautiful than before.

It was a birthday to remember.

He thought he'd come back tomorrow. Buy something, properly, but when he came back confidently, at the same time, the wagon and the bauble woman had gone.

He gave the bauble and the story to his grandson saying,

"If you have Time, son, spend It."