Shattered Windshield Glass Lasts Long Enough

Diamonds might last forever. But shattered windshield glass will last a few lifetimes, at least. Diamonds might signify a kind of romantic love — a possessive, insecure emotion traditionally marked by an expensive, ostentatious, and altogether uncertain symbol of intent. The kind of love that, as often as not, is here today and gone tomorrow. But shattered windshield glass shares lofty associations with unaffected love and undeceiving constancy. In saying these things, I am not regurgitating some cheesy, new-age hype I read somewhere about the hidden powers of bright, shiny objects. I am speaking from personal experience.

Chapter One

I grew up on a wheat farm in the Palouse hills of eastern Washington. I had sixteen school classmates. When I was about 6 years old, one of those classmates and I discovered an open-pit diamond mine while playing in an old abandoned car. Hundreds and hundreds of diamonds lay on the ground beneath what remained of the shattered windshield. Some were individual stones, and plenty more were lightly fused together in flexible sheets of random shapes and sizes. Human beings are attracted to shiny things. My friend and I were human, if young. We were attracted — to say nothing of mesmerized – and we knew just what to do. We got down on our hands and knees and began extraction, using the fronts of our shirts as pails. Ever the pragmatist, my mother came out of the house with two paper bags. We ratcheted our efforts up to strip-mining. That was nearly 50 years ago.

Chapter Two

I got married. A diamond ring was involved. I got divorced.

Chapter Three

Last year, after being separated for more than 35 years, I met up with my diamond-miner friend again. In those intervening years, I probably hadn't forgotten about our diamond mine, but I don't think I'd ever given it any conscious thought. Before saying much, my friend pressed a little gift box into my hands. It was filled with windshield diamonds. This was no cheaply obtained substitute. It was the original loot.

Between the two of us, in the years since we'd last seen each other, my friend and I had lived in nine or ten different states. I had moved more than 20 times and, as an economy measure, I had avoided collecting stuff along the way. But my friend had taken a different approach to moving. She had packed stuff in boxes and never unpacked it.
Just a few days before our meeting, in a fit of exasperation, her grown daughter was unpacking those boxes. Lucky for us, the daughter vented her annoyance when she came upon the paper bagful diamonds, "Mom! A bag of broken glass?" With nothing short of the immoderate energy she'd brought to our original mining venture, my friend lunged for the bag.

Chapter 4

I have that diamond ring buried in a drawer somewhere. Looking at it does nothing for me. I should get rid of it. I have that box of windshield glass in a display case. I will keep it as long as I live. When I pick it up and look at it, I am overcome with joy and sorrow and longing and loss and love. Windshield glass lasts long enough. And lasting love is always mixed with those other things.