Unbroken
The box had six little people in it, wrapped with tissue paper so as not to rattle around. There was a mom, and five children, three girls and two boys.
Filly liked it because the mom and her children mirrored Filly’s family…two boys and three girls. The note on the box said “as is” so Filly asked to have the glass cabinet unlocked that held the little box. As she examined more closely, she noticed that the child sitting on the mom’s lap had a broken head, and one girl had a broken arm and the other girl had a broken leg. One of the boys had a broken leg too.
Filly thought back to almost ten years ago when she was at a garage sale in California. The lady had a table out in her driveway and all she had on the table were hand made ceramic antique figures. A horse, a few chickens, a farmer boy, a bunny and an elephant.
They were valuable and one of a kind and hand made by her sister who had been the artist… but each of the figures were broken. Filly had stopped to admire them and wanted to buy them but knew they were valuable. But the woman said then, that she would let them all go for only twenty five cents if Filly could “fix what was broken”. She took Filly inside at that point and showed her a statue of Mary, almost life size, that her sister had also made.
Filly had given her a quarter, and had taken all the cherished figurines home and painstakingly repaired them.
They were in Taters room now…all repaired and all in constant view, charming whoever stayed in that room. Filly realized that the little people, she was looking at, also were undamaged…and repaired. She had not even purchased them yet, but she knew that once she took charge, that which was broken would be made whole again.
There was not a single one of the “little people” that did not receive her loving care and attention.
She was not an elf, helping the shoemaker, and she was not elf on the shelf. She was just a mom, helping fix that which was broken, whenever she could…just like her mom, and her mom before that.
The sales lady taped the box shut with tape, so the little people pieces would not be lost, and Filly paid for them, along with two vintage books she had found…”Wait for William” which was her husband’s favorite growing up, and “Loraine and the little people of summer”. Interesting that the two things she found at the old antique store were about little people.
Little people mattered…that is what her dad always said.
She put the box in her purse and tucked the books under her arm and wished the lady a Merry Christmas.
And she went home, and fixed all the little people.