Pieces of Glass

I used to spill things. Anything liquid that was in a glass or jug in front of me would not be left standing there for more than a minute. I never meant to, an unintentional swoosh of the hand and I would be sitting in front of a soaked dinner and people tsk tsking me for being so clumsy.

I hardly do it anymore, but on the odd ocassion that I do, I am faced with exactly the same reaction. People forget that I grew up, that I am not so clumsy anymore. It's like I am sitting at the dinner table ten years ago.

Most of the glasses in our kitchen are cracked, my mother blames me. She's probably right, I like to do things quickly, consequently carelessly. Like today, moving a pot from the benchtop to the stove, I managed to let the glass lid slide off. While I hopelessly watched, it fell to the floor and shattered. The rim of the lid had done the improbable: rolled down the length of the kitchen and into the tiny crack beside the fridge, like it knew where it had wanted to be all along.

"Nevermind." My mum told me. "I suppose we can buy just the lid somewhere... K-Mart will probably have some..."

The pieces sparkled under the lights of the kitchen as I swept them up, and I smiled to myself. Treasure. This was our treasure when we were kids. My neighbour, and best friend during my childhood, was an older girl with a wild imagination. She claimed that Jupiter was made of butter, and for years I believed her.

In her back yard she had a "magic tree", we would stand under it for hours trying to make the weather change.

"Blow wind blow!" We would shout, arms extended, a take off of the evil queen in Snow White Christmas. Sometimes, the wind did blow, and this was what kept our faith in the magic tree.

Behind the magic tree, there was a bush which held our treasures. Some days, we would walk down the street looking through the piles of things that people had put out to get rid of. Mostly, we collected baskets made out of palm leaves, but one day we were lucky enough to find a thermos. It was broken - the glass inside had cracked. We could hear it tumbling inside when we shook the thermos, but the piece was too big to get out. Looking inside, the piece reflected against the silver lining, which was all it took to convince us that we had found silver.

We tried as hard as little kids do to get the piece out, but to no avail. Eventually we hid our "treasure" in the bush, and had secret meetings to talk about it. Then one day I went over and was met with my forlorn friend, bearing terrible news: her father had cleaned out the garden and thrown away our treasure. We were upset for many weeks after.

I let the swept pieces of glass shimmer in the light for a while before emptying them out in a plastic bag. It wasn't hard to see how years ago, we had mistaken such glass for treasure - it was quite pretty.

On my way out to the rubbish bin I spotted a renegade piece on the floor, which I lazily swept under the counter, and immediately regretted knowing that one day it would come back to haunt me by cutting someone's foot.

I sighed. Things were so much simpler when I was younger.

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