Would she consider making a stepping stone from the fish bits? I wondered. But my friend said she had done something similar recently, salvaging shards of her husband’s favorite bowl by turning them into a mosaic stepping stone. The thought of another project amidst all the unpacking and organizing didn’t sound like fun. A friend was over that day so I mentioned my idea to make a mosaic stepping stone with them. I washed it and kept that shard among my other childhood treasures for years.īut after my divorce, I found the pieces of the blue fish spoon rest while unpacking in my new home. It hadn’t mattered that it was broken or that I’d found it in the garbage pile. Among the rusty tin cans and oxidizing plastic jugs, I’d once uncovered a fragment of a porcelain bowl with a magenta rose on it. The fragments seemed too pretty to throw out.Īs a child, I liked to go rummaging in the gulley where my family disposed of non-burnable trash (yes, we were those folks). I gathered up the pieces of the spoon rest, put them in a Ziplock bag, and tucked them away. Still, I felt crushed again at that moment. Plenty got broken on purpose during our marriage. I heard the sound of the spoon rest shattering on the tile floor. So little hope and so much despair filled me that day as on so many others, and it felt like things would always be this way. I could never know when something would happen to trigger my then-husband, and he would become enraged again. It hadn’t mattered how we honed our routine for departure, it was always stressful. There was no garden gate opening into the woods.

It certainly was not the shade garden you see today. A different kitchen window in a different house, a different me looking out at a different yard: the suburban lawn, the wood fence, and the neighbor’s white house behind. On that day like on so many others, every nerve in my body had been standing on edge as I stood at the kitchen sink. One Friday, when we’d been getting ready to head to the lake for the weekend, the spoon rest shattered, as often happens with those things we cherish. I had found the piece at an estate sale and liked it very much. When I was married, a blue fish porcelain spoon rest, made in Japan, adorned my kitchen counter. Yet I didn’t always see her in this light. Why keep a mosaic stepping stone whose edges are too sharp? But the edges of this stepping stone are too sharp for that. Shouldn’t a stepping stone rest in the path on the way to somewhere? It’s an unlikely spot for a stepping stone, I’ll admit. Why is a mosaic fish stepping stone leaning against the arbor? You might wonder. Your gaze will narrow and if your vision is reasonably good, you’ll recognize the blue is shaped like a fish. Today, if you stand with me at my kitchen sink and look out the window toward the garden gate that opens into the woods, a spot of blue will catch your eye.

Newton bluefish