This Month's Story

I suppose that when it fell, it made a noise. Maybe not tinkle, tinkle, but well, whatever the noise glass makes when it falls and breaks and there is no one around to hear it.

But when I came in the living room, it had already happened. It lay there on the floor, a small (about ten by ten inches) piece of stained glass that I had hung in the living room window that looks out over the fruit trees. It was a pretty piece that with its bright colors had complemented our view of the trees and the distant woods.

Now it lay broken on the floor.

We had bought the glass at an affair in Blairsville a couple of years ago. The small piece with its colored glass and many bright faceted jewels had been hung by Barbara, the artist, near a window to catch the light and, hopefully, a buyer. It sparkled there and had, indeed, caught Stella’s eye. When she called me over, pointed to it and asked me my opinion, I said I liked it as well.

And so we took it home.

The big problem came when we got it home and tried to find a place to hang it.

It seemed there was no place in our house for stained glass pieces. All the windows in the house are large, five feet by four feet, but they all are placed so as to take advantage of the various views of our farm. They are magnificent views, and the thought of placing the piece of stained glass in their center, even a small piece, somehow seemed wrong.

And so the glass sat for a long time on a shelf in the living room, its bright colors idle, its gaudy jewels muted. One day as I started to pass it by, I picked it up out of curiosity and, to look again at its colors, dangled it in the window looking over the fruit trees. I was surprised. It did well there; very well, in fact. It certainly did not obstruct the view; on the contrary, it complimented the scene with just the right touch of color. I quickly went looking for a plastic suction hanger and placing this against the glass, hung the stained glass in what was to become its new home in the window.

And there it hung for more than a year.

Now it was broken.

I sat on the couch pondering what to do. It was too nice a piece to throw away. Looking at it closely, I found it really wasn’t broken as much as cracked. There were a number of cracks held together by the lead mullion. Actually there were five bad cracks scattered about the piece. But then again, were they really that bad?

Years ago, when Stella and I were visiting friends in Annapolis, I had stopped by an antique shop while Stella was parking the car. The shop owner was outside the shop unloading long pieces of cut beveled glass from his van. The pieces were about three feet by one foot, each having beautiful cuts of swirling bevels of glass, each piece sparkled as the sun caught it as he lifted each from the van, each an enchantment of brilliant prisms. The shop owner was quite proud of the pieces, each of them different, telling me as he lifted each out, that they had just arrived from France

As he said this, one particularly nice piece slipped out of his hand and dropped on the sidewalk. It hit a corner somewhat protected by the wooden shipping frame. While the frame kept it from total destruction, several large cracks now ran through the glass. The small corner with its concentric swirls, while cracked as well, somehow remained intact.

The shop owner gasped in disbelief.

I stepped beside him and looked at the piece. It was beautiful.

“Look, let me take it away from you. I’ll give you a hundred dollars as is.”

He continued to stare astounded at the broken piece.

Finally he stuttered. “I was going to sell them for eight hundred each.”

“I’ll take it, it’ll be gone; you’ll never see it again.”

He turned away from the glass and looked at me, then back at the glass with its long cracks.

“Ok. Cash; get it out of here.”

I reached into that secret place I had in my wallet and handed him a hundred dollar bill. We shook hands; I picked the piece up and went looking for Stella and the car.

The beveled glass with all its faults hung in a window in our bedroom for ten years and not once did I see the cracks when I viewed the morning sun shining in prisms of brilliant light that filtered through those wonderful cuts of swirling bevels that filled our bedroom window. It was a beautiful piece.

That house and its window are gone now, gone for many years, but I still remember the lights coming through those beautiful swirling bevels in the beautiful glass that hung in the window. And so in my hands I held a small reminder.

“Is it badly broken?”

Stella had come in the room and saw what I was holding.

“Not so bad. I have Barbara’s card. Let me call her and see if she can solder on a stronger chain.”

That we did, and Barbara did put a stronger chain on it and now it hangs again in our living room window to sparkle once more in the afternoon sun giving just the right touch of color to our fruit trees and the distant woods.

It looks quite nice.