Jade Elephants (VANITY)

I was thinking of my mom today, and it brought me to something I periodically recall every few years: her Jade Elephants.

My mother had two jade elephants. Actually, they weren't jade, they were ceramic painted green. She got those when we lived in the Philippines. My mother told me they were flown into Clark AFB from Vietnam aboard a C-130.

They were big, 2-3 feet tall, 1-3 feet wide, with the trunk in the down position. We used to have a beautiful wooden, marble-topped coffee table that died at the hands of us children, and my mom saved that inch-thick slab of white marble that was four or five feet long, and when we got the elephants, that slab was laid across the tops with one elephant at each end. My parents also bought an nice Sansui stereo, and that elephant table held it quite comfortably, turntable and stuff on top, the amplifier and reel-to-reel on the floor between the elephants, and one big wooden speaker on the outside of each elephant.

My mom loved those elephants. In the movie "Risky Business", the mother of the character played by Tom Cruise had a fixation with a crystal egg on the mantle. He was terrified that she would notice if it had even been moved a fraction of an inch.

I must take a detour here and mention this, because it seems to fit together here. Previously, her favorite object had been a large, beautifully carved and polished mahogany statue of a negrito hunter. It was about three feet tall, wonderfully carved smooth and stained a dark, inky, black. It was also anatomically correct in all ways. Quite detailed, it was. This was modestly covered with a multicolored woven and fringed loincloth that never seemed to be on its wooden body where it should have been.

As we young kids regarded it from across the room, clothed only in that modest loincloth and holding a spear, it proved an irresistible target. Instead of ending up in the circular cork target on the wall, our brass-tipped darts became deeply embedded in his, er…wood.

We outright ruined that statue. But oddly enough, I never remember her getting crazy about it and chewing us out.

But now, it suddenly comes to me. She thought it was hilarious…she COULDN'T discipline us…it fits so perfectly! The thought of us grinning pre-adolescent urchins winding up and throwing those darts as hard as we could from about five feet way in order to make them stick in that hard, mahogany, er…wood was probably too much for her. She likely couldn't risk losing it in front of us.

But the elephants were different. I think those elephants meant more to her than ceramic furniture, they symbolized something for her. She told me late in life that she got one of the few undamaged pairs off of that C-130. All the other crates contained largely broken segments of elephants. But she got good ones.

So one day, when I was in college, I was vacuuming my room. I lived at home and commuted to college, held down a job and paid for much of my tuition with the GI Bill. (The old GI Bill…) I lived in the attic, which was the first thing my dad renovated in that old house that he grew up in.

I moved the elephants off to the side, about a foot apart, and stood the marble on end leaning up against one of them. I had it balanced just right, and figured I was only going to leave it that way for about 30 seconds while I vacuumed where the stereo had been set up.

As I watched, horrified, the marble rectangle's balance gave way, and it leaned in slow motion with increasing pressure against the elephant it rested against.

Gaping, I watched the elephant tip, and fall, slowly, inexorably towards the other elephant. When it hit, there was the sound of ceramic against ceramic, and bits of green flew outwards. They both came to rest as the marble slab continued down on top, and when it reached its limit, there was a loud crack, and the marble counter broke in two.

I stood there, astonished into speechlessness, mouth open. Three of my mother's most cherished symbols and memories of her life as a Navy wife lay broken on the floor in one, fell, swoop.

I was in panic. What on earth would I tell her? I walked numbly down to the kitchen, and she was doing something at the kitchen table, and had reading glasses on. When I walked in, the glanced up and did a double take. She froze said "Bob, what's wrong?" I said that I didn't know how to tell her, so I was just going to tell her: I broke her elephants.

She stared blankly at me, still frozen, then waved her hand and said "Ah. Those things." Hah, you could have knocked me over with a feather. I stammered, and she took off her glasses, looking at me and said: "How could I be upset? I think about those elephants, and I think of the broken ones on the plane, and all those young men serving and dying in Vietnam, and the elephants didn't seem as important anymore."

My mom was a wonderful woman, and did I ever love her at that moment. In one statement, she had not only absolved me of my carelessness, but took away even the smallest fragment of guilt that might have gnawed at me. What a beautiful thing to do.

very nice story. I’m a very ‘things happen for a reason’ kind of person. This seems to be one of those times...it was an amazing opportunity for your mother to reveal something about herself to you. Something maybe you were searching for but didn’t know how to go about it. (all subconsciously, of course...but I’m so hokey!)

I love this story! How blessed you are to have such a mom! When I was in college, I broke a crystal goblet belonging to my aunt. She had inherited the set of goblets from her mother. The style was no longer made. It was irreplaceable. I froze in horror and then immediately began apologizing profusely. My aunt looked at me and said, “That goblet was just a thing. You are far more important to me than that thing!” I’ve never forgotten that moment, and in fact, was able to say that to my daughter when she totaled (and I mean totaled) one of our cars. As I ran to the ambulance to find her standing by the door, totally unscathed, her first words were, “Mom, I’m so sorry about the car.” Guess what my first words were to her. “Baby, it’s just a thing. You are so much more important to me than any thing!” What a gift my aunt gave me, and I was able to pass it on.

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