The Brown Bowl

 It was just a simple brown bowl.  Ceramic, glazed pottery, not particularly impressive.  Just a simple bowl, and a likely candidate for Spring Cleaning.  I'd thought to give it to Goodwill, sell it in a yard sale in the summer, even toss it out.  Just a simple bowl that seemed to be cluttering up my already cluttered life.
  Perhaps it is from watching my neighbors move on to another home on some other shore, the efforts of the movers to pack up their young lives and possessions.  How much do I have rattling around this home that is not needed, not wanted, but held on to for lack of energy or a willingness to cut these ties?  So much of our lives seems either cluttered with these little trinkets and items of questionable worth, weighing us down, until we are faced with the daunting task of prioritizing what is worthwhile and what is landfill.
  So, I've watched my neighbors move.  Frankly I was fascinated with the process.  The loading of the trucks, hauling this life away to be recreated somewhere else.  I don't know where they went.  We just didn't seem to have the opportunity to get to know each other.  Now they are gone.  All that they owned is now gone but a shell of a home, a lawn of freshly mowed grass and spring tulips and daffodils, greening lilacs and wandering bunches of grape hyacinth no one will clip for a vase on a table.  It seems so transitory.
  And so, I'm back to the bowl.  This simple brown bowl that I've had around for a while but doesn't have much value.  Just another piece of junk weighing down my life with irrelevant junk.  Decision made, I stuffed it into the trash, seeing the maker's mark on the bottom as it went into the can.  In shaking hand I read "Elva 1977".  My heart stopped, my heart stopped!
  Everyday we come to these decisions.  We let things go, we let people go.  We stop paying attention to things, events, even people.  One day they are gone, like those neighbors I didn't get the chance to know, leaving just a memory in their wake as new challenges and new sunsets call.
  And, there is this bowl.  Now in the trash!  Suddenly I'm thinking of the old woman who shaped that bowl, painting it with care and trembling hands as she expressed her art in simple ways.  Who knows the worth of that?  It's hard to quantify, doesn't fit on a ledger form.  I think of this old woman and the smile she had as she looks at her creation, the effort of arthritic hands and aching back, as it comes from the furnace, the simple pride, the simple joy as she signs and dates it.  And, I suddenly remember where I saw that bowl, so long ago, sitting on my Grandmother's table with apples and bananas for us kids.  And, I remember how she would hug us when we came into the house and give us an apple - I always wanted a cookie - and the twinkle she had in her eyes for us.  My Grandmother, Elva.
  Give love, leave something small for those you loved and who love you that they will remember, in bad times, in difficult days, that there was someone who truly loved them.
  Thank you, Grandma.  As you can see, I've found a great use for your bowl.  I love you and miss you.