I knew this day would come; dreaded it for some time. But this morning, when I saw that today was the day, I shrugged and smiled.
The chip on my coffee cup might not sound like a big deal to you, but this hasn’t always been my coffee cup. It was my father’s first. His little sister gave it to him for some occasion or another. I remember her smile, when he opened the gift. She said something about retirement not changing the fact that he was a bricklayer.
I honestly don’t know if my father ever actually drank coffee from this mug. There were plenty of mugs in the cabinet. But, when I was cleaning out those cabinets, that mug went in the box of things that I wanted. That mug was a part of my Dad.
For the past several years, I’ve alternated between this cup and the lovely Polish pottery I inherited from the previous occupant of a classroom I moved into. They are my favorites and no one else in the house ever takes them. Though my mother never owned, nor drank out of, the Polish pottery, I began to think of that as her mug and the construction worker one as Dad’s. I took turns thinking of them each as I poured the coffee. I felt their presence, I visited with a quick memory each time.
With such a weighty connection to a mug, I feared what would happen when one or the other finally succumbed to age and use, or to accident. I feared the grief that might well up.
But, this morning, as I unexpectedly caught my lip on the new chip in Dad’s cup, I was unprepared by how OK I was with it. Things change, things die, and life goes on.
Since my father died, my family changed in some fundamental ways. I will never be a part of the larger family the way I was when he was with us. I grieved over that loss for a long time. I think, in the past year as my little immediate family changes with growth of our girls, I have come very close to being at peace with the evolution of the larger family. I am loving the evolution of my immediate family.
So, the cup is chipped and I should no longer use it. It would slowly, or not so slowly fall apart and I should retire it before I cut my lip or swallow a ceramic fragment.
It feels wrong to just toss it in the trash, so I might find a garden spot to bury it in, or scatter the broken shards in with the border rocks, but I won’t cry the way I thought I would.
Thank you, Aunt Lee, for buying Dad the mug. Thanks for leaving it in the cabinet for me, Dad. I’ll still think of you both when I sit at the kitchen table with a hot cup of coffee.
