Bowling
By Mike Kurilko
I broke the last bowl this morning. I held the broken pieces in my hands and waited for something horrible to happen. A cosmic event, straw-and-camels-back scenario. Nothing. No boom of thunder, no bleeding from the ears – just broken ceramic.
It was a blue bowl, chipped in three places around the rim from years of use. Actually it was white ceramic with a dark blue glaze – the white whiteness of the broken edges were surprisingly pure and untouched. Almost impossibly white in fact, since you just assume without thinking about it that six years of Cocoa Puffs and Chef Boyardee Ravioli with Meat and Cheese soaks in somehow, staining the bowl through and through surely as it has stained my spleen.
It had broken neatly around the IKEA – Sweden logo, as if Swedish ceramic warranty enforcement ninja had tiptoed in and perforated the bowl just so, just so when I plucked it out of the dishwasher, it came apart in my hand in such a way to demonstrate beyond any legal doubt that it was wholly my fault.
The tale of the bowl is one of those stories that might make women want to hug me and pat my head and perhaps even take me to bed. I don’t know for sure because I don’t really talk to women any more. To make it short and sweet, I lost my wife, my house, and my dog, and about 40% of my skin in the fire. I was in the hospital for months, and when I finally got out, everything was gone – either destroyed by the fire and water, stolen by looting bastards, or destroyed when the house was bulldozed after the bank sold the land. Sexy, yes?
This was my wife’s favorite bowl, she loved the color, we’d bought a stack of bowls from IKEA before we even got engaged – two of each color, but the first blue one broke on the way home. So there was only one blue bowl, and that became Carolyn’s favorite (she had a weakness for the outcast-underdog in any situation). When I got out of the hospital, the only thing that my brother had been able to save had been that bowl. He could have done worse, he might have done better. I think it was an accident on his part – he had no idea.
I held the pieces in my hand and tried to fit them back together, wishing I had heat vision – lasers would shoot out of my eyes and zap! the bowl would be good as new. Carolyn ate out of this bowl every day for years. She washed it by hand and put it upside down in her private cupboard nook where she kept her coffees and teas.
I was holding the broken pieces in my hand and I suddenly wondered if I should eat them. Yeah. I could use some kind of tool to break it into little round discs, so it wouldn’t cut up my insides. Or crush it all into powder and scatter it like ashes. Wince – ashes.
Was it sad and freaky to want to keep the pieces? Maybe I could make it into a mosaic or whatever. Or I could glue it together and turn it into a planter. Grow some pet grass or something. Yeah. Pet grass. I’ll hit PetSmart on the way home from work.
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