What Remains

We spend out lives defining ourselves, stamping labels, like t-shirt slogans, across our chests.

But the why or how of us is often invisible. It resides inside, inspired by accumulated moments and memories.

And objects.

When my mother became a grandmother, she was different from the woman I had known. She let Maggie collect trinkets in my Grandma Henry’s cut-glass bowl, a fragile antique I was not allowed to touch when I was a child. Astonished, I mentioned this. My mother said, “Oh, honey, it’s alright. She enjoys it so much.”

Well, who wouldn’t? All those etched patterns like a bit of sparkling, round lace.

“But she’ll break it,” I pressed.

“What would that hurt?” she answered, smiling as the toddler happily filled it with polka-dot socks or plastic toys or silver paperclips. “Isn’t it interesting to see what she loves?”

My mother—definitely changed over time—released that bowl to Maggie’s small hands. She trusted her because she loved her, knowing both qualities lived hand-in-hand as easy partners. Both, far more valuable than perfect glass.

So when an edge inevitably chipped, my mother did not care. It was still a bowl. Maggie was still her darling granddaughter. Love weathers chips.

Maggie felt that. It settled her. Self-confidence grew from that certainty.

A year later my mother was dying with cancer. I clasped her hand and asked, “Mom, how will I go on without you?”

“You’ll be fine, honey. You will.” In a few months, she was gone.

Maggie, not yet three years old, could not understand why Nana left. She cried every day, leading me to the door to go find her. And how could I explain it to her? A Hospice social worker, who had witnessed their mutual joy in each other, suggested a memorial: a tree. Knowing we would likely move several times, I realized it would be something else lost, something to miss.

So I bought a fountain with a faucet that trickled water into a basin. We called it Nana’s Well. Maggie made the substitution, as believing young souls will, and played in it daily, floating toys in the water, talking to my mother. I could hear her say Nana. It settled her.

From Illinois to North Carolina to Minnesota to Ohio, we moved that well. Maggie and her friends played with that water in their childhood adventures. When Maggie outgrew that, she delighted in watching dogs and chipmunks drink from it. Nana’s Well remained in her life, transfigured but constant.

When a landscaper dropped the bottom half this spring, chunks broke off and the surface cracked. Time and weather had made it fragile. It was one thing for me to cry, but when I told Maggie, I was shaken by her distress. After more than twenty years, I thought she might not care.

She did.

I could tell by her silence—withdrawn to a world where words vanished beneath the weight of her emotion. I knew it was my responsibility to repair this remaining bond between my mother and my daughter. Months passed. No one knew how to tackle it until I found Lisa, who listened to the story behind what some would call rubble. Her shop, The Salvage Divas, specialized in turning discarded furniture into re-imagined treasures, and this sounded like a worthy challenge to her.

So our artisan angel descended with supplies, working on her knees in our garden, filling cracks, layering paint finishes, working against autumn’s early darkness and chill.

We said nothing to Maggie, in case the project failed. It did not. When she saw it restored, she stood before it, silent. Lisa had mended far more than a lawn ornament.

What remains of my mother, the best of her, the gift of her, is not in that painted cement. It resides invisibly in my daughter. Loved. Confident.

Settled.