I was in my daughter’s kitchen, waiting for the coffee to perk, when I found it. “This mug!” I exclaimed. “I haven’t seen it in years! How did it end up in your cupboard?” Sara shrugged.
It was a lovely old mug with circles of red and gold, outlined in black like stained glass. “I don’t use it much,” Sara said, “It’s chipped on the edge and has a crack inside. You want it?” Of course I wanted it.
You couldn’t buy mugs like this anymore, modest in size to keep the coffee hot and a handle I could get all my fingers in. But beyond its functional excellence, this mug had history—my history. Somehow it had survived three houses, two marriages and one child growing up. Survived my neglect, my forgetting.
That was five years ago and I still drink coffee out of this mug every morning, paying grateful attention to its presence. So much had been lost over the years, but here it is, with its red and gold circles, the handle and the heft.
Maybe more things deserve my attention. Maybe everything.
