The vase, you see, thought itself a very grand vase, with very grand ideas.
Put it in the drawing room. On the kitchen table. Somewhere that everyone would be drawn to its rainbow brilliance. A place where the sun would halo it in glory, for the vase held the decadent flowers it was filled with, and so was the centerpiece of everything as such.
It was a good vase.
But not in a house where vases were particularly important.
There were no grand ballrooms, or dinner tables that seated seven hundred. One did not simply sit in a room filled with flowers because it was a thing to do, largess and the like, in the house that the vase resided in.
In truth, the very grand vase was in a very mundane house. Three children ran around the circle table set in the center of the kitchen chasing a ball they tossed from one to the other, keeping the middle boy from touching it. The mother wiped sweat from her brow near the stove where she was boiling chicken to make soup. Father was at his desk, equally frazzled over the bills piled high on the counter top.
The vase held a relatively small bouquet that did not even fill its great mouth. The flowers in it drooped over the sides. Water putrefied in its base, turning green with scum from the dying stems in its mix.
How terribly, terribly undervalued was the vase.
It did not know, precisely, where its grand dreams came from. No glass blower had taken the time to shape and form the flute and flourish of its mouth, nor smooth the base it rested upon. An assembly line in a plant that used prongs and plyers on metal hinges turned by machines had created the vase. It was not one of a kind, but sold in bulk to stores around the world, though never in Florence or Venice or…what was that country that made all the glass?
Still, the vase had developed a sense of grandness, and hated that its life was limited to a table in the suburbs.
The oldest girl hip-checked its wooden perch. Tommy slipped around the leg at the base of the table and rose too soon on the other side, prized ball in hand at last.
Ma turned in time to gasp as the vase wobbled. Dad slunk over his papers, not wanting to deal with whatever mayhem was about to ensue.
The vase…tipped.
In trying to catch it, the youngest, sweat-hands-Eugene, fumbled the glass container, and the flowers tipped out across the floor, followed by the mildewed water, and, finally, by the glass which shattered on the tiles down below.
The vase screamed its cracking against the stone. It crunched beneath a foot too slow to stop moving forward, eliciting an all too human shriek in response to stepping on glass.
The room - stilled.
Vases – on sale at Target, Walmart, and Home Goods stores throughout the US and probably Canada. Get yours today for all your floral needs!
* * * * * * *
Oh, fine! Here’s what actually ended up happening.
See, the mom’s a closet artist who enjoys working on mosaics. The shattered vase, which actually had some pretty good detailing on it, she used to overlay a river scene she’d been working on in her basement after she put her kids to sleep each night. On the banks of her river picture, grew flowers of every shape and size and color, and the glass of the vase made the water sparkle and move against the stems, giving the picture life.
She sold the picture in a gallery showing where she barely made back the cost of the vase. But her painting was then sold again, and again, and became a famous work of mosaic art the likes of Monet or Manet – though not exactly, and eventually the shattered-vase-river ended up at Buckingham Palace in some such drawing room or other, just as it always knew it would, a very grand place for a very grand vase to sit among the flowers.
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| Pat Hagen--Birches by the River http://pathagen.com/projects/birches-by-the-river/ |
NOTE: Story not based on real life. All account fictionalized. Any resemblance to real people is completely accidental!
I love this! Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteLove this! And why is it I now read everything you write in your voice?? 🤣🥰
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