Clay Jars

A Story by JRTillay

Just a little story I wrote about growing up

There was a time in my life I believed dreams always came true. Not in a metaphorical sense, but a literal one. I once dreamed that my sister had a cookie factory under her bed, and I would sneak in when she left her door open to try and find it. For hours, I would dig into the carpet and look for some secret hatch. Another time, I dreamed there was an amusement park in my garage. Whenever my parents drove me home, I always came in a few minutes late, searching in our tiny two car garage for some huge track or set of levers or animal-shaped vehicle that could go up and down or loop in the air. Then there was a dream my parents got back together. That was the last time I believed all dreams came true. Don’t take that to be some macabre realization. It would be impractical to believe every dream had meaning. Imagine trying to be a functional adult while feeling compelled to drive to Idaho because you had a dream that the Avatar was there and wanted to teach you Firebending. Growing up is not sad. Scary sometimes, sure. But it’s not really sad.

Anyway, I could not have been old when I still believed in dreams. I was young enough to hold some fantasy of bringing my parents back together, of remedying all the ills of my life. I was not old enough to understand love as the gritty, unequal, difficult thing that it is. I didn’t understand love can be broken, a relationship strained so hard that it can’t be mended. I believed love was impermeable, unbreakable, incorruptible. I believed I could still go back, and I would nod, smiling wryly at the portraits of my family that had been locked up in drawers, as if to say “soon.” I believed fervently that it would happen so very soon, and had little child’s schemes to make it so. The most important scheme concerned a jar in my bathroom which held my mother and father’s wedding bands. It smelled like earth, and the ceramic top made a grating noise whenever I removed it. The noise was very dull, and very quiet, but I feared my father would hear me opening it. He used to tell me it was full of evil, that it had to stay closed or else the evil would get out. I nodded mutely, but deep down I knew he was wrong. To this day, I believe I was right in my assumption. Whatever happened after, those rings were once shared between two people who loved each other, who created my sister, a girl who was nothing short of a goddess to me. They created me, all doe-eyed and shiny like a new coin. There was nothing evil in that jar; there were only two silver bands and the perfectly preserved memory of what they had created.

The jar was small enough to fit in my hands, and it was such a holy relic to me. Among all my fears, the fear of dropping it was the greatest. I would open it, gingerly, and it felt like I was filling the air with my father and mother’s old love. If I held it open long enough, the air would become thick with the silver ghost of their old love. Not too long though, or the jar would run dry and cease to work. Sometimes I would wake up early, before dad, and sneak into the bathroom to leave the jar open. Surely, I thought, he could feel it. So I left it open with all the deliberate care of a scientist, closing my eyes and feeling the air until it seemed warm enough for him to notice, then quickly closing the jar so as not to waste any of the precious magic inside.

I must have been younger than ten, probably closer to five. God, I was so little. But I felt so big, so powerful as I held that jar.

At some point, though, these fantasies leave us. We learn the difference between perfection and practicality, photographs and families, dreams and reality. We learn that what is true in dreams doesn’t translate when we awaken. We learn that sometimes a clay jar has nothing in it but metal and air.

I remember the various breakups I’ve had in my life. Some were slow tears, ones that lasted months. Some were quick rips made over hospital phones. Some were confusing, a gesture of mercy or perhaps lack thereof.

And immediately after, my pride always limped alongside me. It seems a suitable replacement sometimes to the things I lost after a relationship ends. I try to sort out all the things in my mind, place them in order, and find a way to allocate all the blame I can to the other party.

I want to tell myself that the relationship was evil. It didn’t last because you did something wrong.

I want to be comfy and cozy with my internal locus of control.

But truth grows in two directions, like the branches and roots of a tree. We fought over where to eat. You said you would rather date my friends. We took turns storming out of rooms. While you took me for granted, while you grew to hate me, resent me, and while whatever things we loved about each other faded, memories grew. For every moment you stole from me, you gave two back.

Your eyes used to glimmer so brightly when you saw me at the end of the day. It was impossible to fake that gleam, or the delightful intake of breath when you saw me in the morning. You used to teach me how to dance by having me standing on your feet and moving for both of us. And we used to tickle each other until we couldn’t breathe.

Sometimes I still think back wistfully on the men I loved, reminiscing quietly, as I drift off to sleep, at how two grown men can fit so comfortably in each other’s arms. It’s over forever now, I know. But here I hold the things that fuel my dreams. Dreams not only of moments past, but of things I hope to come. Dreams of the next man who will sigh and shiver enchanted by things I say or do.

Sometimes, even now, when I head home from university, I open the jar containing those wedding bands, holding it as gingerly as I always did. I still feel in the air that silver ghost of romance. And I smile, because dreams might not always come true. But sometimes…sometimes they do.