The Vase
- Paul Cotter
- 8 hours ago
- 2 min read
It was one of those moments when time stopped, everything went silent and the universe seemed to wink and say, “Do you see this?”
Our daughter had given flowers to Bonnie for Mother’s Day. For two days, I appreciated the bouquet’s most obvious feature, which was the colorful arrangement of flowers at the top of the vase. But then one morning I saw something I hadn’t noticed before.
Sitting at the table after breakfast, I looked down and saw the flower stems distorted into surrealistic Picasso-style shapes through the water and glass. I leaned in for a closer look and turned the vase slowly this way and that, creating a new distorted surprise with each subtle turn. Then I grabbed my camera and spent about 20 minutes photographing the twisted, bending stems from different perspectives.
Looking back on this experience, I marvel at the way all the elements came together to form something interesting.
The flowers sat in water. The water filled a vase. The vase rested on a table. The table stood next to a window. The window let in shafts of morning sunlight. Remove any of these things and the photograph as I took it could not have happened.
It brings to mind that old proverb about the horseshoe nail: "For the want of the nail, the kingdom was lost." The proverb reminds us that everything is interdependent, and even the smallest things matter.
My wish for you today is that you appreciate how magical it is when events align to create the beautiful and unexpected things in our lives. I hope, too, that when the universe winks and shows you a playful surprise, you can wink back and say, “I see it.”
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