Broken Dreams

I love that single string of pearls worn for adornment. Pearls have been around for years – Jackie Kennedy, the Queen, and even lesser beings like me, lately. When I finally acquired one string, I thought ... if one is good, more must be better.

I don’t have to have real pearls. Fake ones are good, and that is what I have been wearing, two strings that I acquired on the boat for $10 each. I am going to stop wearing them since the cheap strand I purchased on the boat broke as I was in the parking lot at Home Depot, yesterday. I could feel them trickling down my neck, travelling along the inside of my blouse and then, along the side my waist band. I didn't know which part of my body to grab. I finally reached for the broken string still around my neck, but I could also see a trail of them dropping to the ground and bouncing into the huge puddle that water was running into from the spring melt in the parking lot.

Not only was the water running, but so were my pearls, down, down into that pool, a pool large enough that cars were slowing down to go through it. With my hand clutching the half string (now $5 worth instead of $10) I made a quick decision. One choice -- to save what I could in a baggie and put them along side everything else that is cluttering my house, items I am saving for work projects I will never get to. My other choice was to walk right into Home Depot and without opening my hand to look, just drop them in the garbage and concentrate on the big picture of the big jobs for today (like Canadian and American income tax to be filed).

I am ashamed of myself now, for I threw them out. I am sorry about that because I am sitting typing right beside a large cardboard box full of 50 years of broken jewellery that I have meant to repair someday. I am positive there would have been room in that box for those pearls.

Arta