Inside the Spin-Mosaic Studio

Though friends and visitors unknowingly pass right by these tiny treasures without notice, as fate would have it, my son's basketball flying through the room...hit like a targeted missile.

Three orphaned robin eggs, one orphaned cowbird egg and a tiny orphaned hummingbird egg rescued from the yard and tucked into a tiny ceramic bowl with shreds of tissue to soften...were hit and crushed.

Ironically, the 3 eggs towards the top remained in tact while the blunt-force weight of the basketball crushed the two smaller, weaker eggs nestled to the side. Only shell-shards remained.

I saw. I sighed.

I have never been one to sport long or painted fingernails. I simply can't. As an artist, I use my hands too much. Elegance doesn't have a chance. On this day, the tips of my stubby nails employed every known trick of a mosaic artist to find and salvage the most microscopic of shell bits from atop and between the beige yarn hairs of our semi-shag carpet. Some were so small I had to lick the end of my finger to dab up a cracked speck. 

So there you have it. Just like that. Friends and visitors now unknowingly pass by 3 eggs in a ceramic bowl nested next to a pile of shell shards salvaged not only once from my yard, but now twice from my carpet.

99 out of 100 people would have walked by the abandoned eggs sitting in the grass, blown from a nest or dropped from a predator.

99 out of 100 would have picked up the shell shards, tossed them in the trash and moved on with their day. Or, set the vacuum to the task. Even in their broken state, I value these twice-lost eggs; the beauty of their azure blue and round form.

Why must I be the one? The one. Picking up orphaned eggs in the yard is something I must do. After spring storms, my husband gathers fallen branches. I look for windblown eggs. I must.

______

I friend called me once. Upset.

A delight of her spring was to find a robin's nest lush with bright blue eggs outside her bedroom window; close enough to watch the mother meticulously tend to the twigs and warm her eggs with her belly every day.

Then, they were gone; the unwitting victims of her husband's unknowing hedge trimmers. Only shells on the ground were left. Most had blown away by time her tears discovered the tragedy.

"Do me a favor, okay?" I said. "Gather what you can find of the shells. Save them for me."

She didn't question or even ask what I had in mind. She didn't argue or tell me it doesn't matter. Gather them, she did. Deliver them, she did.

With the stubby ends of my over-used fingernails, a pair of tweezers, and a little love, each tiny shard was assembled into a miniature mosaic pendant.

Did this gesture bring the nest back? No. Did it restore life where life was lost? No. What good did it do? You tell me.

______

My son knows these stories. My son knows how I love all that is small and fragile. My son knows his mama has a heart for the broken, the abandoned and the lost. My son knows I will be the 1 of 99 every day and without shame if the power is within me. 

My son knew all this in the moment when his basketball hit my treasures and crushed the two that were weaker than the others. He saw my knees kneel on the floor, pick up the broken shells and extract the dog hairs from the fuzz from the lint from the...carpet. He watched my fingertips return each piece to where it had been...without anger towards accidents or basketballs. 

______

I knew him to be excitable and impulsive. It struck me odd why he was standing so still, calm and serious when the baseball he had hunted for all afternoon nearly a year ago was suddenly in plain sight no more than twenty feet away; unearthed by the spring thaw and revealed by a fallen cover of deadened leaves. 

"I can't get it. I tried. Can you?" Clearly, he was deflated.

I looked at the baseball, then looked back at him. Hmm, his hazel green eyes were more than deflated. He was positively wincing.

Fallen leaves left for a clear view between the thorny vines all the way to the reddish roots where the baseball lay out of reach. The thicket grew wild six feet or so from the outskirts of our front field. Thick. Spikey. Prickly.

Branches rose up and bent back around towards the ground in twists and knots and tangles. A broken weathered handle of an old shovel lay on the ground nearby.

"I tried to reach it with the shovel handle, but I can't. Everything is too pokey." He said softly.

This explained the wince. Thorns had bit him. I could tell by his downcast eyes and the way he protected his mittened hand inside sagging coat pockets. 

Ten-year-old arms were not long enough to safely reach this baseball. His light spring jacket was not thick enough to block the thorns. His lack of experience navigating thorny thickets imagined only one route to the lost baseball.

I, on the other hand, grew up in the Pacific Northwest picking summer berries with my sister in wild, wide and high roadside patches. One step inside those thickets and the vines closed back up behind you like the mouth of an overgrown jungle cave in a wild adventure movie.

My eye had learned how to scan for gaps and intersections that would lead to the parting of the branches. The key was to scan the ground. Notice where roots erupt from the earth and base branches break into tendrils. Step on those roots with knee-high leather boots and the entire bush will lean away to reveal your path to freedom.

The same can be true of baseballs.

This baseball had been sitting here in it's shallow divet through August heat, November decay, January snow and March rains. Whispy deadened grass blown by spring winds wound around it like a muddy robin's nest. 

If I could use the shovel handle like a makeshift golf club, knock it away from the worst of the thorn branches while stepping my leather boot onto the root I may be able to bring it within his reach. I wanted him to still feel a part of the baseball's salvation.

It worked.

The baseball appeared perfect despite it's 3-season sojourn in the field. He held it in both hands like a trophy with a big smile to match. A little muddy. A little sun-bleached.

The trophy was only in his hand for about 3 seconds when suddenly, it unfurled like a toddler holding back a tantrum. The side flap fell downward with gravity into a full flowering bloom. Like a slow-motion video clip of a gray and blue tulip opening to the sun, the figure-eight flaps fell away. The stitching let go of it's spirit.

As quickly as my son's face dropped, a smile reappeared. He ran inside the house with the baseball still cupped in both hands.

Later that day, I was walking through the living room and stopped at the place by the shelf where friends and visitors unknowingly pass by 3 tiny intact treasures and 2 broken ones. There, within and beside the others, he had gently laid a blooming baseball.

________

A Note from Christi: The picture above was taken in a coffee shop where I host student art classes. I brought the baseball along to sketch as the main illustration for this story.

I didn't get too far along until a certain different image flooded my mind. It was the kind of image that wouldn't shake and I had to wonder where it came from. God is the God of inspiration as well as salvation and peace and hope and wisdom. My mind's-eye saw a robin sitting on a nest with a baseball that may have cracked into the branches overhead and trickled down the tree like a pinball machine until finally landing gently into a mother robin's nest.

What, then, is she to do with this?

One word floated through my mind like a ribbon dance: Hope. And, a call for correction was gently in place. I don't know how else to describe it, but a picture is worth 1,000 words, right? So, I set out to recreate the image in my mind.

How often do we nurture sudden opportunity (or a sudden distraction) instead of continuing to stay the course and tend to what God has already given us...individually and personally to care for?

How often do we place our hope in anything or anyone other than the voice of God and the presence of Jesus?

How often does disappointment play out like in Proverbs 13:12, "Hope deferred makes the heart sick; but fulfilled desire is a tree life." ---when the source of disappointment is our own (my own) over-attention to things or burdens not meant for my attention to carry.

In the same way that my son brought the baseball back to the ceramic bowl with eggs and egg-shards, (because this is a place where even brokenness is valued?) it is my hope that this simple little story will jumpstart a gently simmering pot of thought and prayer. Life perspective, like this little picture, is also an ART!

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"The eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him." -- 1 Corinthians 2:9.