glass

My soon-to-be sister-in-law, Ellie, cleaned her apartment today. She was organizing and going through things. While I sat unproductively on the couch, she came out of her room with a thick glass piggybank in the shape of a bear. The bear had a slit at the top: money goes in and doesn’t come out She announced that today was the day she would break open her piggybank. She had been saving for twenty-one years and she was ready.

Having learned from kids running away from home, we put a towel down on the kitchen floor and went for the hammer. With the first tap on the bear’s nose, Ellie was cautious. She was cracking open something that meant a lot to her: something she had for almost her entire life. The bear’s nose proved too strong to break easily, so the bear was turned on it’s stomach. With few quick swings to the bear’s head, the glass cracked and money spilled out, covered in a fine glass dust. Like archaeologists we sifted through the change with tweezers and afterward we threw out the glass, including the piece with the bear’s little black nose.

Ellie, like my brother Jon, is graduating from college on Saturday. She is facing a lot of what I have been feeling lately: fears of change and becoming a person. We’re going through this together, as I am living with them for the summer. She’s broken the piggybank, and I think she’s ready to go.