Looking for more jam

Residual sweetness
London, ON
April 2020
This photo originally shared on Instagram

Don't cry because the marmalade jar is empty. Smile because you once had something sweet.

Or so I tell myself when the knife comes out empty and it slowly becomes apparent to my sleep-deprived mind that breakfast will be missing most of its taste today.

There are far worse things than running out of something you can easily afford to replace on your next grocery run.

I hover over that thought for a moment, acutely conscious of what privilege looks like through the narrow neck of a jar that once held my favorite breakfast garnish.

I realize how lucky I am to a) have a life sprinkled with small, weird indulgences like marmalade, b) be gifted with a storyteller's curiosity, such that even forgettable garbage can become moments and memories and signposts of a life that I hope is viewed by others through a similarly sweet lens.

I realize how lucky I am to have all this, now.

See, today I can shoot a kaleidoscope-like macro of the jar and amuse my wife and kids along the way. Today I have the ability to create visions out of post-consumption, pre-recycled, sticky glass. Today I can conjure up smiles where there were none previously.

Never mind that they're laughing at me and not with me. Funny is funny.

Tomorrow? Maybe not. I'm not guaranteed a tomorrow. Indeed, no one is.

So I play with jars and jam and light, and say stupid-funny things so that the people who matter most will smile. I try to make the todays memorable, because what if there isn't a tomorrow?

Today I scrape what little sweetness I can from the empty glass, and peer at what remains to find the perfect angle that might capture what this moment feels like.

And in the soft light of this particular today, I see why even the seemingly trivial castoffs of everyday life matter as much as they do to those of us who just want a tiny slice of sweetness to hold onto.

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