That’s the Way the Cookie…no, I can’t do that one.

[Mr. Parker phonetically reads the side of a box containing a prize that he won]
Mr. Parker: “Fra-gee-lay”. That must be Italian.
Mrs. Parker: Uh, I think that says “FRAGILE”, dear.
Mr. Parker: Oh…yeah.

--A Christmas Story (1983)

---------------------------------------

When I was a youngster, one of the things I remember always being on the kitchen counter was a cookie jar. The jar was shaped like a monk, who had a kindly face. Inscribed along the bottom of his robe was the phrase, “Thou Shalt Not Steal”.

In 1961 or thereabouts, before my parents were married, my mother spotted the jar in the window of a shop, and she fell in love with it. The jar cost $25 then. Twenty-five bucks is on the low end of typical nowadays, so I’m sure you understand that, in 1961, it was pretty steep.

So she started saving up her money, and before she’d scraped the money together, a couple of her co-workers chipped in and bought it for her as an engagement present. It did hold cookies for a long time; then at some point about twenty years ago or thereabouts, she started putting books of matches in it. And when my mother and stepfather traveled about the country on their frequent road trips, they’d snag matchbooks here and there and put them into the jar.

So the cookie jar was actually a bit of a fire hazard for awhile there, what with the souvenirs from King Kullen supermarkets on Long Island (featuring artwork from the 1980s), and restaurants in Las Vegas, NV; Biloxi, MS and Washington State, to name a few. There was one pack from a restaurant called The Good Steer, which I remember eating at one time as a kid.

Flash forward a little bit.

As part of my inexorable slide into decrepitude and, ultimately, The Big Sleep, the odometer on my body clicked over yet another notch this past Friday. I’m 47 years old, now.

My mother called me early in the week to tell me that she was sending a package my way for my birthday, so I should keep an eye out for it. Thursday afternoon, when I arrived home, a box was on the porch. The box had a bit of a ding in the side, but I didn’t think anything of it since I didn’t know its contents. It also didn’t specifically bother me that it rattled, for the same reason. Then I got it inside and opened it up.

There were two items in the box. Wait, that’s not quite right. What my mother had mailed was two items. What arrived was a couple of dozen pieces of two items. One was a statue of an elephant, about eight inches high and perhaps nine long. My mother had picked it up in a shop some years ago. The other…was the cookie jar. It, like the elephant, was absolutely shattered.  No fewer than twenty-one pieces of broken porcelain, among several dozen unused packs of matches.

It was clear that she’d packed the hell out of it, but it didn’t help. Some of the cells in the pillow packs were no longer filled with air, such was the damage.

I sat there for a long time, just staring at the carnage. I knew my mother was expecting me to call her with all kinds of delight and surprise and pleasure, and instead I was absolutely heartbroken. I knew what it meant for her to send it to me, and to have to tell her that it hadn’t arrived safely was going to be one of the harder things I had to tell her. I picked up the phone and got it over with.

She was definitely upset but snapped into business mode after a minute or two, telling me that she’d call the UPS Store from where she’d shipped it and get back to me. She called me back awhile later with instructions that, I discovered the next day, turned out to be incorrect. But we got that part straightened out and as of right now UPS is doing some investigating, so how that shakes out still remains to be seen.

I’ve done some research into restoring the jar, and apparently there are services which can make repairs, even to this level of damage--which, technically, is called “Disaster” breakage. Anything that’s more than two or three pieces is “disaster” level. And the cost is directly related to the level of restoration: if you want it presentable, it can run you about $100. Full restoration, which as I understand it would actually bring it back to food-grade, can run to several times that figure. The photo above came from a place that would sell a replacement for about $75. Cheaper, but not the one that was a gift to my mother.

In the end, I realize that it’s just stuff, you know? And yet, I’ve had to leave so much stuff behind throughout my adult life that this feels like a genuine loss. My next step with this will be a carefully-considered one.

Comments

[yellojkt]

That is terrible. I've heard that marking a package fragile is even worse because the warehouse monkeys then view it as a challenge.

[janice]

Oh, I'm so sorry, Claude. I remember that cookie jar. I think you should spend the $100 dollars and get it fixed. Then it can be a testiment to putting the pieces of you life together.

[OM]

Hey, I say go for the $100 fix. You don't need it to look perfect, because it's not perfect any more. When you look at it, the cracks will remind you of the history of the jar up to the point it was broken (for a while). On the other hand, if you get the expensive restoration, I bet you'll still look at it and find cracks.

[Trish Johnston]

Welll, Claude, against what most people say, I say, "DO sweat the small stuff, it's what happens to us!" What we need to do, I guess, is to "Make DO with DOO-DOO!" I love that your Mother sent the cookie jar to you and the meaning it has to you! The bubble wrap may have not held the treasure securely, but surely your Mother and you have!! Sorry if I sound so deep here, but I really love the jist of the "Present!" and its, well, "passed/past..." xo