The Parable of the Red Bowl
As a child I found my Grandmother B's house enchanting. It was so full of stuff. Stuff made with quality materials. In the house where I grew up, things were made of plastic and cardboard. The ostensibly fanciest piece of furniture we had, our china cabinet? Medium density fiberboard, with a rich-looking veneer glued on it. My parents spoke of it as if it was a gift from the Emperor of China. I revered it as an heirloom piece, too, until one day my mother was carrying a box that nicked against the corner of the cabinet, peeling off a strip of the veneer to reveal the sawdust and paste underneath. It was like pulling back the curtain to find the Wizard of Oz is just a man moving levers.
In Grandma B's house almost nothing was made of plastic or cardboard or MDF. Instead it was full of things made of various woods, such as beech and mahogany. And real stone such as marble and slate. I sat on a leather sofa for the first time at Grandma's house. My parents literally screamed at me about how I needed to be careful because it was over 30 years old, but that 30+ year old sofa was still in better condition than the 10 year old piece-of-crap sofa my parents owned.
All these wondrous things in my grandma's house had stories. You see, while my grandparents were affluent, they were not idly rich. They bought nice things carefully. Each beautiful thing that filled their house over the course of many years was chosen deliberately, with a sense that money is real and doesn't grow on trees, so everything had a story behind it: where it came from, why it was selected, what it meant, even down to- for big items like furniture the piano- how they got it into the house. Thus it was equally enchanting to learn what all these beautiful things were made of as to hear the story behind them.
As you might imagine in a house furnished carefully and with intention, things largely matched a motif. The furniture in the large living room wasn't all upholstered with the same pattern, but the wood trim and legs all matched. The table, chairs, and cabinets in the formal dining room all matched. Bedrooms had different motifs, but within each room the items matched a particular look or style. Except there was one item in the house that stood out as different from everything else: a red bowl.
The red crystal bowl sat in one of the display cabinets in the dining room. Unlike everything else in the room which all matched, this bowl matched nothing. It was conspicuous in its difference.
"What this bowl made of?" I asked my grandmother.
"It's crystal," she began, and then she explained the story behind it.
It was red, the color of ruby, because ruby is the traditional gift for a 40th anniversary. It was sent as a gift by friends ahead of gradma and grandpa's 40th anniversary. The friends were leaving on an extended trip overseas, so they send the gift months early.
But why is nothing else in the house ruby? Ah, because grandpa died just before their 40th anniversary. There was no 40th anniversary to celebrate, so there were no other 40th anniversary gifts; just this one, given months ahead of time, when grandpa was still alive.
It took me years to distill the lesson from this lone red crystal bowl, and years longer to understand how I needed to put it into practice.
Don't put off seeing your friends and relatives until the indefinite "later". Especially as they age, there won't always be a later.
In Grandma B's house almost nothing was made of plastic or cardboard or MDF. Instead it was full of things made of various woods, such as beech and mahogany. And real stone such as marble and slate. I sat on a leather sofa for the first time at Grandma's house. My parents literally screamed at me about how I needed to be careful because it was over 30 years old, but that 30+ year old sofa was still in better condition than the 10 year old piece-of-crap sofa my parents owned.
All these wondrous things in my grandma's house had stories. You see, while my grandparents were affluent, they were not idly rich. They bought nice things carefully. Each beautiful thing that filled their house over the course of many years was chosen deliberately, with a sense that money is real and doesn't grow on trees, so everything had a story behind it: where it came from, why it was selected, what it meant, even down to- for big items like furniture the piano- how they got it into the house. Thus it was equally enchanting to learn what all these beautiful things were made of as to hear the story behind them.
As you might imagine in a house furnished carefully and with intention, things largely matched a motif. The furniture in the large living room wasn't all upholstered with the same pattern, but the wood trim and legs all matched. The table, chairs, and cabinets in the formal dining room all matched. Bedrooms had different motifs, but within each room the items matched a particular look or style. Except there was one item in the house that stood out as different from everything else: a red bowl.
The red crystal bowl sat in one of the display cabinets in the dining room. Unlike everything else in the room which all matched, this bowl matched nothing. It was conspicuous in its difference.
"What this bowl made of?" I asked my grandmother.
"It's crystal," she began, and then she explained the story behind it.
It was red, the color of ruby, because ruby is the traditional gift for a 40th anniversary. It was sent as a gift by friends ahead of gradma and grandpa's 40th anniversary. The friends were leaving on an extended trip overseas, so they send the gift months early.
But why is nothing else in the house ruby? Ah, because grandpa died just before their 40th anniversary. There was no 40th anniversary to celebrate, so there were no other 40th anniversary gifts; just this one, given months ahead of time, when grandpa was still alive.
It took me years to distill the lesson from this lone red crystal bowl, and years longer to understand how I needed to put it into practice.
Don't put off seeing your friends and relatives until the indefinite "later". Especially as they age, there won't always be a later.