Little Things
I have six glass balls, each a little bigger than a baseball. They’re clear with bubbles in them. Two are tinted gold, or maybe orange. They are flattened a bit at a point so that they sit steady when placed and don’t roll away. They used to have bases that lit up, with a light shining through the ball. There’s only one base left. It, with its ball, is on the mantle. The rest sit on window sills to catch the light of the sun.
We bought them on one of those days that marked my fifty years of marriage. A day of shopping, looking for little things, budget conscious things, that we might buy to decorate our house. Accents. The little things that make food taste good or make a house feel like a home. It wasn’t a make or break purchase, it was just something we saw that we liked. We could have come home empty handed and it still would have been a nice day.
When I look back on my life and my marriage, there are certainly a lot of big events that catch the eye, the jewels in the cloth of memory, but it’s the little threads I like, the ones that make up the big picture. Shopping for those baubles with my wife. The joy of my father when I made a good running catch as a first grader. The pleasure of singing while my mother played the piano. The joy of holding my children. First words. First steps. Little things. In the long run, I think it’s what made the big things possible. And I’m glad I managed to pay attention and participate.