The Marble

The Marble

by April Davis

Next month, my family celebrates one year in our home. I've put a little bit of thought into the memories we have accumulated in the almost 365 days inside our little home with the bright turquoise wall outside: the day we were reunited with our daughter after 17 years apart, the day my youngest dressed up for her 8^th grade formal, the tickle fights in the kitchen, the burned banana bread, the additional dog we adopted from the shelter, the family game nights... I could go on and on.

So today, when we moved in the brand new stove, it felt like another milestone reached. I was happy.

I swept the tile under the old stove and didn't think twice about the small, clear marble that rolled around the dust pan like a ping pong ball bouncing in an old machine until several moments later.

We are the only people to live in this house other than the previous owners. They built the house and lived there for over 40 years. Kind of cool if you ask me.

“That's not ours. We've never had marbles in this house,” I thought as I looked at the dust pan that ate up the marble. “My daughter has never played with those.”

Then it hit me; the marble must have belonged to the former owners.

I tilted my head to one side and considered this; the former owner was widowed. She had out lived her husband and THREE sons. Her grandson was the only family she had left. That's all I knew about the family. A pretty sad story, really.

If she was alone for all that time, just how long had that marble been there? Did it belong to one of her sons? The grandson? Either way, it had to have been there an extremely long time.
That marble represented something pretty big; over 40 years of memories, over 40 years of laughter and love. A clear, yet dirty gem that saw heartbreak. A hidden witness to the years passing by, an aging couple that lost all their children, that had no family in the area, a window that left her home when she could not longer care for herself.

I stopped sweeping. I started at the spot that would soon hold my new stove.

To find such a treasure, forgotten and left behind, I considered it a sort of miracle, a reminder that these walls, while giving me memories, still house and home someone elses' cherished times, too. I vowed to do my best to be a family, to live, to love, to be happy, and to play games. Maybe a game like marbles...

I finished sweeping. My husband and I put the new stove in place.

As I left, I glanced around, wondering what new memories lay ahead for us... and wondered what teeny witness we might leave behind for the next owners, decades down the road.