Daily Sauntering

On the window frame of the parsonage entrance, where the sunlight streams in dazzlingly, sits a small decorative porcelain cat I bought not long ago at the church’s thrift shop for fifty cents.
Its glossy black coat is tinged with soft brown along the belly. The little cat lies on its side, paws lifted toward the air in a playful, endearing pose. It gives me the irresistible urge to tickle its belly, which is why I placed it on the prominent windowsill where my eyes often rest.

One day, while cleaning, I accidentally knocked it over and broke off its right ear. It happened so quickly, and as I touched the jagged edge, I thought I could almost hear Mrs. Bert’s tongue clicking in dismay—“tut, tut, tut.”

Mrs. Bert, who lived alone, had a lifelong hobby of collecting dolls and all kinds of porcelain animals. Each time I visited her home, she would proudly show me her treasures, lifting out one memory after another, inviting me into the courtyard of her past as if time had stopped.

She spoke of the sweet dance at her first ball, her romance and marriage to an American soldier stationed in Germany during her youth, the travels she shared with her late husband, and the operas they attended together. With no one left to visit her except for the photos on the wall and her beloved porcelain figures, she would repeat her stories like a worn record, never tiring, each time someone crossed her threshold.

Her repeated tales, like that skipping record, were the perfect lullaby for drowsiness, and I often found myself struggling to stay awake in her soft chair, eventually forcing myself to stand up and leave. Even our goodbyes at her front door lasted thirty minutes, for she could not resist telling me—again—about the faded flower wreath hanging there, made by her only son when he was in elementary school. She would inevitably wipe away tears as she spoke, longing for the bond between mother and child.

In time, she began to weaken quietly. One cold winter day, she went out, caught a severe cold, and became bedridden—never again able to walk on her own. She left this world empty-handed, unable to take with her a single one of her cherished possessions, not even the faded flower wreath she had treasured on her door for over fifty years.

After her passing, her only son Stephen came up from Philadelphia with his wife to New York to settle her affairs. Without hesitation, he wrapped each of his mother’s decades-old collectibles in outdated newspaper and neatly packed them into boxes, donating them all to the church thrift shop—those porcelain animals, the dolls, the trinkets she had loved so dearly.

Along with worn clothing, old shoes, tattered magazines, used furniture, and cheap plastic ornaments came the faded flower wreath his mother had treasured, her love letters exchanged between Germany and the U.S., and the letters Stephen had written to her from elementary school through college. All were swept together into the heap of her belongings.

As I watched her treasures emerge one by one from their newspaper wrappings, I recalled the words of Jeremy Taylor, a 16th-century Anglican bishop: “People disappear, and only things remain.”

What, then, do we truly draw up from the net of a lifetime? Without their owner, are such possessions not utterly meaningless? And yet, the poor spend their lives striving to gain material abundance, while the wealthy spend theirs pursuing greater comfort and luxury. What could be more tragic?

I returned the bundle of old letters to Stephen in Philadelphia and quietly bought three or four of her auctioned keepsakes, now going for mere pennies amid the dust. Placed on the window ledge of my own life, they remind me of her sparkling eyes, golden hair, and fair skin.

And I ask myself: What is it that I, a mist that appears for a little while, truly dream of and seek on this earth? If I do not give fully when the opportunity is before me, if I do not love well in the moment when love is required—then what will I truly leave behind in this world?