TARDIS

Silvered Cracks

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Firstly, thanks so much for your calm patience. The school year is almost done; that particular madness almost over for a couple months.

Now. May tell you a story about this mug right here? Oh, OK. Thank you!

I know that, to you, it might look a bit of a mess, but I find it quite beautiful. This TARDIS mug was gifted to me by some dear ones a few Christmases ago. Completely unexpected and absolutely delightful. I love my TARDIS mug! However, one day last year, I came home from work to find this waiting for me on my stove.

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My darling TARDIS all in pieces and an apologetic note from my father in law. At that time, I had just started back to work, our daughter was attending preschool/daycare half-day, and so her grandparents would take care of her in the morning and get her school at noon. My dad-in-awesome likes to keep busy and, as such, he helped out with the chores around the house. Again, this was my first year back to work since our girl had been born four years previous, and I was, honestly, overwhelmed with handling work and family and housekeeping. So I appreciated my father-in-law doing up the dishes and coming home to an empty sink. Unfortunately, in the process one day, he knocked my mug against the side of the sink just right (wrong?), and it shattered. Most of the pieces were large enough to fit back together, however, so he saved them for me.

I cried. Seriously. I sat down and cried over my broken TARDIS. My gorgeous “borrowed-and-blue” box had exploded. I snapped a picture and sent it to my tea-guru, sister-mama, and oldest friend in my adult life. She immediately suggested that I send her the pieces, and she would kintsugi them. If you do a quick Wikipedia search, you’d find that Kintsugi (“golden joinery”), also known as Kintsukuroi (“golden repair”), is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum. My dear wifey had done this with some of her own broken crockery before and I found myself irrationally excited by the prospect. I knew the mug would likely not be useable again, but I would have my dearly-gifted TARDIS back whole. So I packed up the pieces in bubble wrap and newspaper and sent them off to Courtney.

Before I did that, however, I sent the picture of my TARDIS-in-pieces to one other person, my friend Daniel. He is my beloved “clever boy” and the main reason that I adore the Eleventh Doctor (“Doctor Who”) so much: the character is art imitating life to me in that his playful and buoyant personality reminds me constantly of my Dan. When I sent him the picture, his response was immediate.

“Oh no no no no no. This is your fabulous TARDIS mug?! Or was this the teapot? I insist you let me send you a replacement for whichever it was. ❤❤ Time Ladies need their T(ea)ARDISes.”

Soon enough a new mug showed up in my mailbox, which I have happily used up to the present. Now, I will admit to embarressedly not telling the dear friends who gifted me the mug in the first place that it was broken for the longest time. I have finally just admitted to it. I think I did not want them to think me reckless with my gift, nor did I want them to be upset that it had gotten broken. (I’m sorry, dears, really-really!)

Now, flash-forward to last week. A package arrived from my wifey’s art Etsy shop; in it were a calendar and some prints that I had ordered. However, there was also another package from her waiting for me, and I had no idea what it is. Upon opening up the second package, I found my precious TARDIS 1.0, now beautifully put back together with shimmery silver lining its cracks and cementing the pieces into a whole. It was as though starlight was trying to burst out from the inside. It is stunning!

It now sits on my shelf with some other keepsakes, such as my first dip pen and the box for one of my newest gifted fountain pens, and reminds me constantly of the treasures that are my dear ones. How they have all come alongside me when I have needed them most, and shored up my heart and spirit in its darkest moments. A reminder that, while broken and cracked, there is still light. It can and does still pour through, even if just in bits. Thank you, my dears.

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The Blue Bench

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There is a bench somewhere, probably nearby. You might have totally missed it before, but it’s there. More of a swing, really, though it’s mostly fallen into disuse as such over the years. Its color, however, has remained bright and vivid, as if it desires to teach the sky how to be just so. It’s a rather impossibly bright shade, making the bench simultaneously something old and something new.

This is an uncommon bench. This bench invites company. As you sit on the bench, you will find that its openness and space are not diminished. Rather, the bench seems bigger, longer, wider, brighter. So you add a friend. That bright blue bench seems bigger still. The more people who join you on the bench, the bigger it seems. The bench sees everyone as important and makes room for them.

The bench holds a lot of things, things spoken, sung, shared, and written. Joyous dreams. Mind-blowing adventures. Broken hearts. Torn souls. Stronger scars. Triumphant stories. Tearful whispers. But one of the most important things that this brilliant blue bench holds is a hand to always take yours, someone who has got your back and will always be there. Because the bench never met someone who wasn’t important. And everyone needs someone.

The Blue Bench

NaBloMoPo Day 21: Artistic Bent

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In our local coffee shop are sold prints and paintings by local artists. My husband came home one Saturday morning from his coffee run to inform me that I needed to go to the coffee shop later and look at the art because there was something there that would interest me. So, later, we took a walk with Elizabeth and, entering the coffee shop, Ben drew me over to where some new paintings sat and said, “Can you guess which one I thought you’d like?” It took me a moment but soon I saw it. Sitting there was a small 8×10 print of this:

If you know Doctor Who then you recognize this piece. In an episode in Series 5 of the restart of the hit British show, the Doctor and Amy Pon visit Vincent Van Gogh after the Doctor sees a monstrous shape in one of Vincent’s paintings in an exhibit. Throughout the episode, we find that Vincent not only has mental issues but is gifted with, at times, visions of the future. He painted the above, a depiction of the TARDIS exploding and burning, a catastrophic event that haunts the Doctor’s future, though how or why he doesn’t know.

I think it’s beautiful and the fact that someone studied it and Van Gogh’s style enough to recreate it made me squee. Unfortunately, it was a single canvas and it was already sold. Ah, well. Next time, right?

Utter Dichotomy

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She was an utter dichotomy sitting there at the diner counter in her sundress, polka-dot, peep-toe, wedge sandals, a turquoise ribbon shining against her dark hair, the abundant curls of which had been hastily caught up into a makeshift chignon at the base of her neck, due to the unexpected heat in the restaurant. Wasn’t this why air conditioners were invented? Surrounded by Coca-Cola memorabilia and looked down upon like the moon by a giant portrait of Elvis, framed by vinyl records, she bounced her toe slightly to the beat of “Earth Angel”. She looked like a picture out of “Grease”, sipping on a milkshake while playing with her iPhone. The smell of sizzling meat and deep-fried whatever filled the diner as servers rushed back and forth behind the counter before her, making milkshakes and getting ice cream cones. In the background behind her was inconsequential chatter as she typed away with her thumb, putting down her milkshake so she could use her more dexterous index finger. She was writing it down so she would remember, though none of them ever would.

None of them would ever remember the strange man (whom she was still sure had a smorgasbord of mental issues) with the bright blue box that was bigger on the inside, ancient and inexplicably new at the same time. He said he’d borrowed it, sort of. He’d shown it to her, offered her “adventures throughout time and space. I love a good spot of adventure, don’t you?”

“No.”

“No?”

“No, I don’t like adventure.”

And she didn’t  She didn’t like the unknown, with all its variables and dangers and long, long ways from home. Life had enough adventure as it was. She was getting ready to start graduate school soon, leaving the school where she had been for four years, the friends she had made, the professors she admired, the campus that had become home. She was already scared enough of that; she didn’t need the whole of time and space to compound that fear.

He seemed intrigued. No one had ever told him no before, at least not that he could recently remember. So he sat down next to her on the steps just inside the door and they…talked. For a long, long time they talked. Correction: she talked. She told him about her life, her parents, her home, about her. Why, she never knew. Why did she open up the book that was her life to this strange stranger? But she did. She told him it all, punctuated by laughs and tears, anger and joy.

And he listened. Unlike when he had first come to her, he hardly said a word. He leaned his elbow upon his knee, his cheek propped upon his fist, and he listened. When she finally circled around to that day, he gave her a small smile.

“You’re right,” he said, “You have adventure enough here. Your entire life is an adventure, don’t you see? I suppose…I suppose I never really thought of it that way. I always thought I was offering adventure, never that I was interfering with one.” His smile is sheepish then. “Sorry about that.”

She smiled and laid a small hand on his arm, telling him that it was all right. She hadn’t thought of her life as an adventure either.

“Well! I will take my blue box and leave you to your adventure.” He bounced up from his seat, all his former energy returning.

“You’re part of it now, you know,” she told him as she rose herself, pausing on the steps, “You’re part of my adventure, even though I won’t go with you on yours.”

The strange man smiled and, coming back down the steps, reached out and gathered her to him in a hug.

She couldn’t quite describe what he smelled like. A hint of smoke, strawberry jam, silk spiced with incense…she just couldn’t place it. Finally, she gave up and hugged him back.

When he pushed her back, the strange man smiled and then turned her around and began shoving her out towards the doors. “Have a good life, look both ways before crossing the street, don’t take any plug nickels (whatever that means), and…” He paused as she was almost out the door.

“And enjoy your adventure.” He smiled was broad and bright as he stuck his hands in his pockets and rocked back and forth on his feet.

“I will,” she assured him before stepping out the door. When she turned around, the borrowed and blue box was gone, as was the strange man inside.

No. None of them in the diner would ever remember. But she would. She would always remember. With a smile, she finished up and turned towards the diner doors and the adventure that awaited her beyond them.

“Geronimo.”