Magical Moment 148, "One Piece at a Time"

In preparation for my family’s upcoming visit, I’ve been de-cluttering our cramped apartment to make room for three extra people for a week. This involved a great deal of sorting, vacuuming, and shoving random junk into the hot, hard-to-get-to attic. Along the way were many exclamations of, “Oh, there that is!” and, “I thought we lost that in the move.”

Eddie re-discovered one of his Christmas gifts from 2 years ago - a do it yourself stepping stone creation kit. You poor cement into a hexagon-shaped mold and then craft a design using pieces of broken, colored glass. I bought him this in North Carolina when we had a house, yard, and garden, but we never got around to constructing the lawn ornament. Instead it was lost in the shuffle along with other back-shelf items when we moved to New Jersey.

Today of all days, we decided to tackle the job and sat outside mixing and pouring cement. We brain stormed ideas of what the design should be, deciding between a generic pattern or something a little more personal. In the end, we decided it should be somewhat personalized and agreed on a heart in the middle with both of our initials, and 2 small symbols that represent each of us. I chose a music note, and Eddie chose a turtle (you would get it if you knew him).

Creating a design from small, misshaped fragments turned out to be more difficult than we thought. We sorted colors and mapped out a rough idea of the plan on a piece of cardboard. Finally we began to set each piece of glass into the cement. After a few carefully placed pieces, I had my misgivings about how the product would turn out. But as we continued, one piece at a time, it soon came together. In an hour, we had our beautifully formed, one of a kind creation, proudly displayed on the shared lawn in front of our apartment.

It seems everything in life is a metaphor for life. We have a rough idea of how we think it should go, we have our misgivings, but it all turns out in the end, if we just take it one piece at a time.

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