The Vase

I extracted the antique vase from its cardboard moving box, disappointed that it was, as always, perfectly intact. No matter how frequently the vase gets transported from one place to another, it never breaks. Not a single crack. As a heavily career driven middle aged woman, I move quite often. When I move, the vase moves with me. I assumed possession of this vase when my mother died quite a few years ago. I’ve had this vase for over a decade now. Covered in intricate and delicate painting marks, I made the choice to hold onto this unique handcrafted Chinese vase. Over time it’s just become a burden. Each time I move, I wrap it up in paper and stuff it in a box labeled fragile. I make sure that box is handled with care during the move. I always take the vase out of its box and carefully place it on a shelf in the corner of my closet. I wrap it with a little bit less paper each time I move.

Why do I still hold onto this vase? Perhaps it's me succumbing to the sunk cost fallacy. Perhaps it’s guilt. My mother didn’t have many nice things, but she did have this beautiful vase. She is no longer in this world to proudly display her vase, so now I have it. I don’t necessarily want it to break; but if it were to happen to break, then I would lose one more burden from my already busy life. For now, it sits on the shelf and simultaneously reminds me of everything my mother had and what she could never get.

“Why do we bring this vase everywhere we go?” My husband came out of our closet, adjusting his tie and haphazardly looking in the mirror.

“I don’t know…there’s something in me that just wants to hold onto it.” That wasn’t a lie, I really meant it. If it weren’t true then it wouldn’t currently be in our closet. But there was also something in me that wanted it gone as well. If I could donate all of my mother’s clothes and various personal items, why couldn’t I get rid of this damn vase?

“I don’t care either way, I was just curious. Seems like you never put it out.” He was right, I had never displayed the vase before. It just never quite fit in with the theme of where I was living. My house is decorated in houseplants, cat toys, aquariums, and pictures of me and my husband. A giant golden Chinese vase would just look strange, wouldn’t it? After my husband went to work, I ventured into the closet. Maybe you have somewhere to go. It had been sitting on its new shelf in the closet for a couple weeks by that point. I grabbed the vase and placed it on the built-in bookshelf in our new apartment. It didn’t look great, but it didn’t look horrible either. Might as well just leave it and see if it starts to blend in.

The next day at work, my boss invited me to an unassuming one-on-one video call.

“Coreen, I wanted to let you know that I’ve been seeing how hard you’ve been working. Despite having to move all over the country, your work is just exemplary. I wanted to let you know that you will be getting a substantial salary increase starting today. You do such great work for this company, and I wanted to let you know that it has been noticed and that you are appreciated.” A raise? I have always prided myself in being an excellent employee, but I was not expecting a raise anytime soon.

On the drive home, I noticed that the squeaky noise my car had been making for the past few months had just…disappeared. A few days later, I had my annual physical with my primary care physician.

“Well all of your labs came back, and you did a great job on lowering your cholesterol. This is the first time it’s been less than two hundred in a few years! Whatever you’re doing, just keep doing it.” I definitely had not been focused on eating healthy…much less specifically on lowering my cholesterol intake. I sure hadn’t been exercising more than usual either.

Something was off. I was continuously getting strokes of good luck, and I had no idea why. The only thing that had changed was I had moved the vase from the closet to the bookshelf in my living room. Weeks went by, and then months went by. My sinuses cleared up, and I no longer had the chronic allergies I had been living with all my life. I got a month of free rent at my apartment because my name was randomly chosen in a raffle. My favorite restaurant chain just happened to open a new building within walking distance from my apartment. My periods were now barely noticeable because I bled so little. At some point I thought the good luck would stop, but it didn’t. Every single day was better than the previous day.

Over the next few months, I felt the need to protect the vase. I first moved it to a lower shelf, in case it were to fall off the shelf for some reason. Then I moved it to the very lowest shelf, because that was where it would be the most safe…right? Then I realized that being on a bookshelf wasn’t safe at all, so I placed it on the ground in a corner. One of my cats decided to innocently rub on the vase, and I nearly lost it. I began screaming at my cat, asking her if she even knew what she was risking. I eventually bought a glass museum display to put the vase in, and I felt safe knowing it would be adequately protected. Slowly the glass container, with my vase stored safely on the inside, moved closer and closer to my bedside table. The last thing I saw before going to sleep was my vase, and it was the first thing I laid my eyes on when I awoke.

One morning, I noticed that my invaluable vase had a small crack in it. Where the crack came from, I would never know. Each day, the crack grew a little bit larger, and my luck became less abundant. Strangers were no longer opening doors for me. I wasn’t getting dessert on the house when I ate out anymore. Every avocado that I bought used to be the most perfect avocado in the world, but they began to get browner and browner. The squeaky noise in my car came back. Every stoplight I drove through used to be green, but they slowly turned to yellow. Eventually every single light was a red light.

Not only had my luck run out, but my life began to fill with adversity and despair. My air conditioning went out and the heat killed all of my fish. I was diagnosed with skin cancer. My insurance wouldn’t pay for the skin biopsy either. One day my cat disappeared and never came back home. I felt bad for screaming at her. My anxiety became so bad, it became difficult to work. I was let go from my job. My husband left me for another woman. I looked at my vase once again. Now, the cracks were all over the vase, and they ran very deep. However, the vase was still very much intact. Maybe you have somewhere to go.

I opened up the doors to my balcony. A cool wind began to blow through my apartment. The sun was beginning to set, and the world was oddly quiet. All at once, I thought about all that I once had, and all that I could never get back. I crouched down and opened the protective glass case that was holding my vase. I reached in. As soon as my finger touched my lovely vase, it shattered into a thousand pieces.