It came back with a tiny little chip along its lip along with a sincere apology, albeit mixed with unblinking speculation that it might have been there before I lent it out. The thing is, this bowl, one of the few unique pieces of anything I own, was a gift. It was handmade in a pottery studio on Martha's Vineyard. It had been with me since my first apartment out of college. It was one of the few notable items I spent a small fortune storing in a Manhattan storage unit when I left everything behind and landed here in the New York. It would have been unusual had a chip gone unnoticed in my care.
Within twenty-four hours of its return, the bowl did exactly what I had feared. Despite my dabbing crazy glue to the crook of the chip, overnight, the bowl had angrily split from the tiny triangular missing shard at the top straight down to the base. Who knew clay would break ever so neatly?

Unable to part from it, I crazy glued the two halves together and resolved to find a way to keep the bowl in my life. To hold hunky muffins, maybe. Or crispy wedges of tortilla triangles. Maybe some crunchy apples. And so I did, until the crazy glue gave out late this summer. I let it sit on the counter for a day or two which then turned into something much longer than I care to say. It hung out for so long that Soeur, the slob of all slobs, even asked what it was doing there. I told her the truth, that I was mentally preparing myself to say good-bye. You'd think it was my boyfriend. It took me a while longer, but I eventually mustered up enough will power to suppress the anguish of loss and escort the pieces to the trash room.
Gone was one less beautiful thing from Julia.
But why the drama? Exactly
what was the big deal? When did I start caring about
stuff? As urban girls go, I shy away from things and names and trends. Sure, I see pretty things all around, but it's one of those things that I see waaaaaay over there, waaaaaay outside of my reach. And that's ok. Because somebody's gotta be glam and Julia ain't she. As I kid, I naturally detached myself from wants, more as a means of necessity than a condition of my character, I think. When you're little and your friends make out like bandits on their birthdays and Christmas and you get nothing, what are you going to do? Get a job? At 7? I don't think so. Decades later, that residual childhood discipline has morphed into something more of a stubborn restraint. I have a difficult time getting myself things. It's almost ridiculous. When I do get something nice, it's almost always as a gift and it usually takes me ages to actually use it. Which brings me back to the bowl...
I don't know how long it was before I stopped staring at it sitting pretty on the shelf and actually used it. Its deep maroon tones were dreamy. I made a lot of baked goods in it - that I know for sure. I was careful to mix by hand worried that an electric mixer might not be good for the little bumps that lined the bowl here and there. Then, one day, I obliged a friend without thinking twice.
My big red bowl? I don't have a red...oh, wait, that bowl? You need it for what? For your party? Sure! Why not? See you at the party!
Contrary to what they teach the kiddos these days, I now embrace the new and improved no sharing policy. It sounds a bit ridiculous, an adult not sharing, but I want to hang onto the things that are beautiful to me, the tangible
things that make up the stories from years past, even if it's just a one-of-a-kind handmade piece of pottery I used for pancake batter.