Once again, I type the words, "First story of the New Year." It seems like I just did that a moment ago. Where did last year go? Yet, I am still thankful to be writing and posting, albeit not as often as I'd like. Maybe this year will be different.




The Red Glass

It sits in a glass fronted cabinet with the mundane china and exudes the color of passion, fire, and exuberance. It isn’t a glass to drink milk or juice from – it’s a vessel for alchemy. The girl, Elizabeth, knows this, the reputation of it having been handed down through the generations along with the thing itself.

A little ceremony goes along with the inheritance. The mother places the two fingers of her right hand over the rim, pressing firmly along the inside to placate the restless emptiness, and gives a slow back-handed wave of her left hand. This wave is always towards the daughter who stands closely enough to accept the glass with her two fingers echoing her mother’s gestures to continue the spell of passage. The mother then leans towards her daughter, over the glass, grasps her neck to pull her in and whispers into her daughter’s ear. Elizabeth doesn’t know what words are whispered then, but she can imagine, having watched her great grandmother and then her grandmother perform this ritual.

Oh how she longs to be in receipt of those whispered words. Sometimes when her mother is not in the house, she opens the cabinet and positions her ear as close to the top of the red glass as she can, hoping to catch a bit of the incantation that might have fallen inside. She never hears even a sigh.

As the years have gone by she has pestered her own mother to reveal the secret – but she always hears, “Not yet, my girl. There is a time for that and you know as well as I that you are not yet a woman. When the time comes, I will know.”

Then one morning when the girl awakens to the first day of her eighteenth year on earth, her mother cooks her oatmeal from scratch, sets it before her on the kitchen table, and quietly says, “Tonight.”

Elizabeth eats every bite of the oatmeal, rinses her bowl, and dresses for the ensuing endless hours. She doesn’t hear a word that any person speaks to her that day, be it bus driver, teacher, or friend, only the increasing loudness of the tic of the clocks.

Ultimately, the interminable day is done and she is sitting in her kitchen watching her mother carefully remove the red glass from the cabinet. Then Mama takes her hand, pulls her from her chair and ceremonially positions them both, nose to nose.

And finally, finally the ritual begins -- Elizabeth’s body is tingling with expectation and desire. Fingers are placed just so, here, and here, and then her mother leans in and whispers, “Don’t Break The Glass.”