A special souvenir ~ my column from Sunday's paper

This morning when I moved some magazines making room for two mugs of steaming coffee, I accidentally knocked a yellow glass ball off the table. It bounced off the area rug, hit the wooden floor and rolled into the corner of the fireplace, which cracked the knick-knack into three pieces.

It was not entirely my fault and seemed insignificant, but the result was a look of sadness on Jilda’s face that I had not seen in a long time.

I asked if her mom or grandmother had given it to her, but she said no. Turns out, it was the first gift I ever bought her after we started dating in 1968.

I turned that over in my mind a moment digging for a trace of memory and finally it came back to me slowly.

It was the Friday after Thanksgiving, and she’d somehow convinced her mom and dad to let her go with me and our friends Dale and Debbie to Gatlinburg, Tennessee. The only hitch was that we’d have to drive up and back on the same day. Her mom and dad were not idiots. Allowing their 16-year-old daughter to stay overnight without adult supervision was not in the stars.

We left out before daylight that morning and drove the five hours to Gatlinburg in Dale’s Ford Maverick that was the color rust.

As we weaved our way through scenic roads into the mountains, we passed deer and all

kinds of critters who regarded us curiously. The clouds were gray as woodsmoke, and soon snow began falling. When we stopped at Maloney’s Point for a photo op on the way into town.

Once we got into Gatlinburg, we did a little sightseeing and grabbed a bite of lunch but realized there were many miles to go. Getting snowed in didn’t seem like a good idea, so we got back on the road though we did stop at one point long enough to build a little snowman.

We pulled into a tiny gift shop filled with candles and glass figurines to buy a few souvenirs. The place smelled of musk and patchouli. Somewhere in the back, a percolator was gurgling a fresh pot of apple cider, which made the shop smell like Christmas. That’s where I bought her the little yellow ball.

I know that it must have been inexpensive because I didn’t have a lot of money then, but it was a hit with my new girlfriend. It seemed to make her happy, and she held on to the keepsake through the years.

It managed to survive generations of children who’ve visited our home. For some reason, kids who could barely walk would hoist themselves up wobble-legged, balance on one hand and reach straight for that little yellow ball. I can’t count the times it dropped and rolled across our wooden floor like a big marble.

In years past, we’ve gone through phases where we’d declutter our home. Each time we did that routine was painful because it meant deciding what was meaningful and what we could let go. The little glass ball always made the cut.

I felt a little sad standing there with the pieces of that keepsake in my hand as I remembered that magical day in Tennessee.