Carly and I went to the Riverside Arts Market on a date last Saturday. We ate shaved ice and beignets, watched a juggler and belly dancer, and fingered necklaces and things that sparkled. Creativity on full display.
Eventually, we wandered into a booth selling Smashed Bottles. These are glass bottles that look like someone has sucked all the air out of them, leaving them flattened, with only a bump where the bottom has folded in.
The merchant explained how they find bottles, heat them in a kiln until, essentially, the glass melts into itself. “After being being put through heat of that intensity, then cooling, the glass itself becomes three times stronger than it was originally. These smashed bottles,” he said proudly “will not break easily, and you can’t scratch them. You can cut on them, do whatever. They’re still glass, but stronger.”
There were transparent bottles, white, green and blue bottles, wine, whisky, and water bottles for us to touch. Some had the labels perfectly intact, the artwork encased in the glass. Some were made into cutting boards, trivets, or dip holders. Others were hung up to make windchimes. A few were melted together to make a birdbath. Every one was different and begged to be examined.
I’m reading Ahab’s Wife (think MobyDick, not Elijah) by S.J. Naslund. The author speaks in the voice of Una, writing her memoir. If you meet a woman of whatever complexion who sails her life with strength and grace and assurance, talk to her! And what you will find is that there has been a suffering, that at some time she has left herself for hanging dead.
“Yes,” I said out loud when I read that. Faces swirled through my mind, and then tears down my face with the true-ness of it as I thought of women I know who have had the air sucked out of their souls by loss, uncertainty, pain, loneliness, waiting.
If writing my memoirs, I would agree with Una’s observation, but qualify it. Coming through suffering may make a woman strong, but not always beautiful, not always gracious and open.
I have known women who come out of that place angry and closed, as if the bitterness of that terrible cup, and the unanswered questions are sealed into their being. They may be hard to break, yes, but they scratch at the slightest touch, and their edges are sharp.
Then there are the women I know who are luminous in their strength. I want to be around them, harboring the secret hope that they’ll let their secret slip, write out a “how-to” like a recipe on a slip of paper. Their graciousness smooths over my rough edges, and their humor helps me take myself, and the world, less seriously. Forget their age, their season of life, whatever may be coming next. They move through the rounds, days, and weeks with an air of assurance, not apathy, nor fear.
I have talked to these women and watched their lives. Mix their stories with what I can see for myself, and it is true—the waiting, heartache, and loss have worked a change. They are still the same women they were before, but somehow altogether different too. Still glass, but stronger. Each experience was different, and intimate, and they don’t attempt to say exctly how it was (words cease doing justice) but anyone who has been there knows this: Each, in their own way and words, tell me that when they got to that place, Someone was already there.
Someone who was, at one time, left hanging dead. Or so it seemed.
He came back, the same, yet altogether different. (To talk to a woman, first, calling her by name, assuring her).
Look for Him, melt into Him, and you will not be ruined or left. This is what I hear from their stories.
His intensity there – the preservative, the transformative.
And on the other side, there is the surprise of grace sealed into the soul, the capacity for life, usefulness, joy.
I don’t know yet if this is true in Una’s story. I’ll tell you when I’m finished with the book. I want it to be true in mine.
I bought a few of the pieces in the booth to give to luminous women I know and tell them how they are, in truth, smashed bottles.
I will need to go back and get more.
