The Grapes

My dad used to be an antique dealer. When he and my mother divorced, I was five and didn't handle it very well. To console me, he gave me a small set of jade grapes. I loved them deeply. In fact, they became the physical symbol of my love for my father. 

The jade grapes were AN ISSUE with my mother and grandmother. My mother viewed them as some kind of betrayal of her and insisted they be kept on the mantle. She said they needed to be out of my reach because I would just break them like I did everything else. While the point was valid (I was a small child and small children break things), I knew she mostly hated them because I connected them with my dad. I would pull a chair from the dining room into the living room and stand on it so I could touch them. 

My grandmother hated them because she felt like I was devoting some level of blasphemous attention to them. One day she caught me talking to them, saying "I love you" and stuff like that. She didn't realize I was talking to my dad. The grapes just represented him. I tried to explain this and somehow that made it worse.

The next year, our house was burned. I never saw the grapes again. I wanted to dig through the rubble and see if they survived, but I wasn't allowed. I was sent away to stay with various relatives while things were handled. If my grapes survived, I was never told. And given everyone's reactions to them, I'm guessing they wouldn't have saved them for me anyway.

Today, I bought myself a new set of jade grapes.