Broken and Becoming

Broken and becoming alliterate, and that’s cute. But there’s more.

I keep broken clay pots in my garden. Once upon a time, some were bedazzled with colorful glass beads. Happy yellows, peaceful greens, fierce reds, and intense blues.

Hurricanes, time, and careless hands have taken turns cracking my pots and dislodging beads from glue and grout.

I tuck shards of clay in raised beds to retard soil erosion. One large clay pot poses as decor on its missing side, reclined like a sunbather on her elbows looking at the ocean.

I have recovered many bead fugitives. Some I leave where I spy them because I don’t hate stepping over bright blues wedged between walkway stones. Some beads sunbathe on the edge of beds. Others lurk at the bottom of my koi pond and take turns catching sunlight.

Backyards Become

My backyard is an ocean of treasures, glass beads, shiny black stones, spoons that went missing with yogurt cups, and other surprises. After thirty years and children all flown, I still find treasures. Some broken. Some intact but wearing years of weather and soil.

Ariel sits next to my greenhouse in a sink. Lost and found at least five times: when I tilled a garden in the right of way, when I cleared the Virginia creeper from beneath the fig tree, on the edge of the compost pile, and in a bed of amaryllis.

The last time I found Ariel, I placed her on the sink that we rescued from the curb for gardening purposes. “I’ll let Audrey know ,” I told myself. My oldest would be amused to discover I still have her Happy Meal Ariel. She’d be incredulous, this miracle of Ariel who didn’t sink into the soil forever or suffer the blades of a lawnmower.

We Become

Things that are broken are not really. My clay pots have not seen their last hour, their pieces tucked along the sides and in the corners of my raised beds. Moles and my hoe continue to encounter remnants of our season of young children. And the glass beads. How many have I rescued to clean and reuse in a project or toss into the pond?

We all break or become unglued or lost. But the important thing is not that we’re broken. it’s what we become after we break, after we sink into the soil for a few years, after we free ourselves from the glue and grout of expectations. As I chew on mortal questions and griefs over loss and change, I look to what I can become, how to use change and serve new purposes. There is a becoming in our breaking if we allow. And there is beauty in that becoming.

©Pennie Nichols. All Rights Reserved. 2025