A Boy in A China Shop

When I was about 29 I met a man who told me this story.

He was a little kid dressed for a Newton Massachusetts winter, his puffy blue coat so stuffed with down that he could barely lower his arms.  His mother took him into a china shop with the admonition, "Don't touch anything!"

When they got inside all the delicate trinkets were arranged on shelves that were situated precariously leaving narrow aisles through which he and his mother tried to navigate with great caution.  The boy stood statuesquely, waiting as patiently as he could while his mother browsed.  He was trying so hard to be careful that when his mother moved along, he stayed still, quietly nervous behind her.  Behind him a few steps, she said his name, "Andrew, come on."  And with that, he spun around to follow her, his arms like propellers sending rows of delicate ceramic ware crashing to the floor in pieces.

He told me about how she, nearly in tears, got down on the floor and picked up all the shattered pieces and with only the kind of pride a Southern woman could muster, insisted on paying for them.

When he spoke of this story, his voice always became softer, more distant.  You could hear the admiration for his mother as he spoke of her, sitting determinedly at a table gluing the pieces of cups and saucers and plates back together.  He remembered actually trying to use those broken dishes for a while.

In a way, I think this snapshot of his childhood became a defining theme for his life.  He was a wanderer, a seeker who never seemed to know what he was trying to find.  He entered people's lives with the best of intentions at times, but usually left them in pieces.

I met him when he was most decidedly, a man.  A man with life experience, with hopes and dreams, with losses and with great victories behind him.  A decade older than me, I looked up to him, admired him even, though in retrospect I realize I never really knew him.  I accepted what he showed me, loved him for what he was able to give and hurt for all the damage his emptiness did, both to him and to me.

People come to us throughout our lives, often to teach us things about ourselves we might not otherwise ever discover.  For a while I let anger and bitterness toward him color every memory of the 5 years we were together; but time has a way of erasing anger and even pain.  Eventually I was able to appreciate even the worst things about him; instead of seeing him as a malicious person who intended me harm, I began to think of him as a four-year old boy in a puffy blue coat trying to be careful, yet always somehow breaking things.  Truth is, I needed to be broken and then broken some more and broken yet again before I could begin start to putting myself together the way I was meant to be.

Here I am, all these years later, glued back together, more satisfied with who I am that I've ever been and I cannot discount the role he played the paths I've worn thus far.  His road was a different one, one that led him far away from who I was or am or could have ever been.  So different from one another, I some times marvel at how the Universe ever threw us together in the first place.

Even broken things give us something to hold onto though, and among the many things he left me, the courage to write this blog is one of them.  He gave confidence to my voice, and took joy in knowing my mind.  Oh, my heart he tore into pieces, but my mind, he nurtured.

I rarely think about it, but next to my bed sits a little table well worn with time.  It has moved from Massachusetts to Charleston.  From Charleston to Atlanta.  From Atlanta back to SC with me where it has stayed beside me for many years.  He gave me that table, had no use for it anymore he said.   I've kept nothing else of his.  No photos, no letters, no little mementos at all.  But that table, it sits beside me every night, my books piled on it, my lamp perched just so that I can read myself to sleep.  Years' worth of books have rested there, glasses of water, stacks of journals, abandoned art projects; it has been a landing place for all the things I've used to glue myself back together.

A few nights ago he showed up in my dream.  My dreams, a place he has not occupied in so long, I thought were closed to him.  But there he was, looking 38 again, that bushy beard on his face, a serious scowl across his brow.  "I'm outta here." He said.  So I stood too look at him, and it only seemed right to ask for a kiss goodbye.  "Kiss me first." I said, and so he dd.  Then he was gone.

I woke up knowing he had finally found the end of that long road he always itched to travel.

He traveled it well.  Left trails of broken people all along the way, likely carrying pieces of each of them with him everywhere he went.  I hope he left this world finally glued together the way he was supposed to be.

Perhaps we all need a good breaking; but I hope we all deserve the chance to put ourselves together again before we have to go.

How amazing would it be if in the afterlife there are no more china shops or puffy coats?  Just wide open spaces and nothing breakable, ever again.

Rest in peace, my friend.