Lately, former islander Lynda Vanden Elzen is drinking her morning tea from a teacup held together with Krazy Glue.
Needless to say, it’s a special mug with a story.
Back in 2007, after leaving a toxic job, Lynda was working at the Snug Cafe.
In those days, next door to the Snug was the late Joan Knight’s pottery shop, Vonigo (Knight ran the pottery shop in various locations until she was 95). Every day, the Snug’s Joan Hayes would send someone over to fetch an order from the elderly islander and the job often fell to Lynda.
“Every day she would sit at her little desk at the pottery shop and she would try to tell me that she wanted to have...little apple pies…or cookies or something,” said Lynda. But Knight was diabetic and the Snug was under strict instructions not to give her sugar.
“She would ask for a pie and I’d bring her soup,” recalled Lynda.
“One evening, when we were closing the shop, Joan’s daughter Susan showed up with this mug,” said Lynda. “She had discovered it had a small flaw and so she did not feel she could sell it. She gave it to me to thank me for looking after her mother as best I could.”
And the mug became a prized possession. It travelled with Lynda up and down the province after she left the island in 2012––surviving 11 moves.
At one point, the mug was in a car crash in Fort St. John. The mug was in Lynda’s roommate’s car when the roommate’s boyfriend totalled the vehicle. The roommate paid to get into the ICBC impound lot just so she could retrieve the mug, which miraculously survived unchipped.
“I have had my tea in this mug nearly every day for 13 years,” said Lynda. And every morning, as she drank her morning tea, Lynda would think of Joan and Bowen and the Snug. “I resist sentimentalizing things, because I try to live with only the things I need,” said Lynda in an email. “It is easier to let go of things when they are not tied to a story but as I age, every belonging has a story and I am particular about what I keep.”
But few months ago, the mug was in the cupboard, fell out and a piece broke off of it. Out came the glue. Then Monday evening, Lynda wasn’t feeling well and her iPhone cord was wrapped around the mug. She pulled the cord, the mug fell and the rim broke into several pieces.
While the mug still holds liquid, Lynda turned to Facebook with her story. She posted on Bowen Island Everything Else to ask if anyone knew where she could get a replacement.
Of course Joan Knight’s daughter is Sue Clarke, who was already planning on firing a new batch of mugs.
Lynda should have her new mug soon.
But the old chipped mug isn’t going into the garbage––Lynda is thinking of finding a way to have the cracks filled, like the art of Kintsugi, giving a new life to the old keepsake.
