Maybe I just get too attached to things

Bramble & Briar #113

Managed decline of a faithful friend

There’s broken glass all around my slippered feet. I stare at the mess uncomprehendingly, stupidly, and replay the past thirty seconds in my head in the hope of finding an explanation. I’m reaching down to lift the Pyrex measuring jug out of the bottom drawer, as I’ve done countless times in this house and its several predecessors. This time, though, unaccountably, I feel a jolt of surprise as the handle catches on an edge and, suddenly, the jug is doing a somersault – just the one flip, there’s no room for another – before it crashes to the kitchen floor, missing the carpet runner by centimetres and cracking into impressively large chunks on the hard quarry tiles. I don’t know how long this jug has been part of my every day experience, but we’ve been married for thirty years and it seems to have been in daily use for as long as I can remember. Of course, I didn’t cry. But, you know. I could have done.

It’s just a jug, Andrew. Three clicks later and I’d ordered an identical replacement. No big deal.

Ah yes, but – and you’ll have to excuse me here – I do find exactly this kind of thing to be a big deal. Which conceivably means I might be a little touched but I think that’s a protected characteristic now, or it ought to be, and anyway, I reserve the right to be exactly as I am, as should you. And the way I am is this: I get very attached to things. People, maybe not so much – and then only the good ones. Dogs, naturally¹. Objects, you bet – things I find useful, or beautiful, and that don’t get on my nerves (this is probably why most people so infrequently make the grade). Something that fits seemlessly into my day by virtue of its being well designed, or of having particular sentimental value, in which case a whole host of quirks can be overlooked. For all my investment, the measuring jug might as well have spent the past decades hopping about on kitchen surfaces, chattering away to me and intermittently bursting into song like one of Belle’s surprisingly animate friends in Disney’s version of Beauty and the Beast. Don’t even get me started on the little blue teapot I bought in my first year at university that sprung a leak and had to be retired after more than twenty years of faithful service. It became a plant pot for a while, before gradually disintegrating in the courtyard – a slow and painful decline for the both of us, and I probably should have just got rid as soon as it became unusable, but I didn’t have it in me. I’m still finding tiny, bright lapis blue fragments of pottery in the gravel to this day.

The point is this.