The Enigma of the Broken Teacup.

Australia seems to be short on footpaths. You can find them in Sydney but once you begin to spread out to the surrounding villages, bang, goodbye footpaths. Or rather, goodbye footpaths that go anywhere. They do start but then they stop abruptly in the middle of absolutely nowhere.

I’m not complaining. Living in Australia is great. I just spend a lot of time walking in gutters.

And it was on such a day, as I strode blithely down a dry Australian gutter, that I stumbled upon a treasure half buried by fallen leaves. I stooped down and picked it up. I could balance it on the end of my thumb it was so tiny. It was the smallest china teacup I’d ever seen.

It was fine china, not plastic, and it was exquisitely hand-painted with pale pink roses. It’s delicate handle was picked out in gold. It was so perfect, it was as though some tiny family of mice had been celebrating a birthday party with a moonlight picnic and had left it behind when they returned to their snug hollow trees.

It was also broken. A wedge of china had fallen out of the cup and although I spent considerable time raking through the leaves, I couldn’t find the missing piece.

I wrapped it in a tissue and took it home.

The cup began to haunt my thoughts. How did it get into the gutter? Who made it? Who had owned it previously? Did they miss it? How was it broken? If I went back to that gutter and looked even more thoroughly, would I find the missing piece?

The cup kept swirling around in my head and then one day something clicked.

It was the smallness and the brokenness of the teacup that made it so fascinating.

It intrigued me in a way a whole, large tea cup never could.

It was the weakness, it was the crack and it was the imperfection that elevated a child’s toy to an object of enchantment and curiosity.

The teacup had been broken, rejected and forgotten.

It had lost it’s first factory freshness.

But it had also gained a story.

And the more I looked at that tiny teacup sitting on the end of my thumb, the more I thought, “it is better to be broken with a story, than pristine and perfect with nothing useful to say.”

All writing and illustrations are copy write R.M. Hamilton and may not be reproduced without written permission. The photograph is generously provided by congerdesign from Pixabay.