The Cracked Pot

The Cracked Pot (click link to audio story)

This is an ancient Chinese folk story about purpose...and acceptance. It is, really, about recognizing that flaws are gifts and that imperfections are necessities.  While the story itself is short, the implications are significant.

The two pots seem to have a similar purpose:  to carry water from the river to the home.  However, one pot is cracked--imperfect--and is unable to hold all of the water for the journey.  The poor pot becomes more and more unhappy as it recognizes that it is unable to fulfill its purpose.  Unbeknownst to the pot, the woman who carries the two pots daily has not only seen the unique gift the pot brings to the world, she has exploited it over time and is able to show the pot the beauty created out of the pot's purported failure.  In the end, the pot has brought beauty to the world and the woman has shown the pot its true value.  

We are all cracked pots; we have beautiful imperfections that affect our world in profound and unique ways.  And, perhaps more importantly, we often do not see our own gifts so it is critical that we show others the value they possess.

Enjoy!

The Search Begins

I clicked from picture to picture, link to link, scrolling through text and images looking for a glimpse of my father.

I read through obituaries (finally finding the one that I had written--poorly, I might add) and medical research...pages upon pages of research... his name attached to professional papers with titles about immunoglobin something or other and C3 proteins.  I even found a handwritten census from 1942.

I kept going, a gnawing sense of familiarity in this search made me uncomfortable.     

Finally the Google search: “Howard University College of Medicine” brought me to the archived yearbooks.  I had been looking for traces of my father’s existence and finally, finally, there was an archive open to me, without a fee attached.  Howard University Yearbook, The Bison.  There it was.  My clicks were a little faster.  I searched “Roger Spitzer--Roger E Spitzer---Roger Earl Spitzer” and each time the message popped up instantly: no pages found.  I tried every date I could think of...maybe I had my dates mixed up? I searched the yearbooks 1960...61...59...63?  The date I knew was 1962, but with no trace of my father anywhere in this digitally archived yearbook, I was, quite suddenly and without warning, questioning everything.  Was this another one of his elaborate lies? Was this another story spun out of control, family lore that bore little resemblance to reality? My clicks were becoming frantic, no longer seeking out details, but now just needing confirmation.  In a moment of haste, I downloaded the entire 1962 Howard University Yearbook to my school issued computer.  All 302 unsecured pages.  Every last potentially virus-ladened bit of it.

I enlarged the text and started to look carefully, turning the pages electronically and watching the brown faces float across my screen.  I got to the end and stared, disbelievingly, at the back cover.  How was this possible?  I went back to the table of contents.  I went back to the college of medicine.  I looked again. Slower this time.  And there he was. Page 234.  In the upper right hand corner, just above Joseph Evans Sutton, Jr.  Looking remarkably like my older brother.

In that instant, I was reassured that my father was who he said he was. He hadn’t embellished his medical school education.  His enrollment was not a fabrication.  This was something that was, in fact, true.