Dating : “The Rainbow Jar” — A Short Story

I remember it like it was yesterday, even though it was only this morning. My mother walked into my bedroom carrying her most cherished possession. I had just finished packing for college and was nowhere near thinking “What kind of delicate tchotchke could I try shoving in my bag somewhere?” Yet here it was, in my mother’s outstretched hands, as if it was pulling her into the room.

It was a ceramic jar that was a skosh bigger than a jar of mustard. Like a jar of fancy mustard that you would ask the fancy man in the fancy car next to you if he had any. Not that stuff that comes in a plastic tube and sprays out the brightest, most artificial yellow so blinding that not even Bob Ross would know what to do with.

The jar was a marbled brown and grey clay that had been fired solid. It was conical in shape, narrow at the bottom and opening up wider as it reached up from my mother’s hands. At the top, the jar converged to a spout that stood about an inch and a half tall with a very wide mouth. The spout was sealed up tight with a wooden cork and covered with a very bright red wax that had been melted over the top and dripped down the sides. I had always been envious of that sheen, and I had always wanted to find an apple that beautiful and then eat it. In painted on letters, the jar was labeled “Rainbow Jar”.

My mother proceeded to tell me the circumstances by which she came to own the rainbow jar, and I pretended to listen as if I had not heard this story a hundred times already. It was the fall of her freshman year at college. Her high school boyfriend had broken up with her when he went to a university in a different state. Her friends were still her friends, but they had gone to different schools as well. She didn’t particularly like her roommate and she was not doing well in her classes. I could have quickly summed it up for her and said her life pretty much sucked. My mother was walking back to her dorm one evening, contemplating leaving college, when she ran into who I have always referred to as her “hippie godmother” named Moonbeam.

Moonbeam wore her dreadlocks tied up high on her head, red round sunglasses at night, a ring in her nose, a baja hoodie that covered her sweatpants, and no shoes. She also carried the rainbow jar. Moonbeam told my mother that she was dancing in a field during a rain shower. After the rain stopped, the most vibrant rainbow appeared in the field. Moonbeam caught it in the jar and corked it up to protect it. She told my mother that she could sense that my mom was going through a difficult time. She offered to sell the rainbow jar to my mom for only five dollars. Realizing that she had only five dollars in her wallet, my mom thought it was kismet. Not only did she get the jar, but she also got the warning that I now received.

“You can only open the jar one time. Once you do you will see the most beautiful colors that you have ever seen in your entire life. However, the rainbow will escape and will never be seen again.”

My mother finished the story like she always did. She never opened the jar. She never needed to. She made new friends and started doing better in her classes. She even met a new boy she liked, who wasn’t my father, and that was ok too. She never needed to open the jar, but just knowing that she had it in case she needed it made her feel so much better and so much more confident. And now the jar was mine.

How do I put this delicately?

“Why would I want a jar that some hippie told you has a rainbow inside of it? Couldn’t you just give me a sealed envelope that a meth addict told you that it contained a picture of the last unicorn taking a dump on a leprechaun? It would be easier to pack.”

My mother told me that the comfort was not in seeing the rainbow. It was knowing that no matter how bad things got, she still had this amazing gift that symbolized that no situation was without hope. Because she had the rainbow jar, there was no time in her life when she felt like she had nothing. There was no darkness that a rainbow couldn’t light up. She left the rainbow jar on my lap, kissed me on the head, and left.

I have been sitting on my bed for two hours with this rainbow jar on my lap. I can’t decide who was more inconsiderate. I can’t decide who is more the fool? I can’t decide if I should just open the jar right now. As I sit and contemplate the machinations of the rainbow jar, my phone buzzes. It is a text from my boyfriend.

“We need to talk.”

I hold the rainbow jar tight and curl up on my bed.