Glitter

Late yesterday afternoon I was on my hands and knees carefully running the vacuum cleaner over the floor of our dining room and kitchen. The flooring is planked vinyl and we usually care for it with a dust mop, but the situation required a different approach. What had happened was that a small vial of glitter had been spilled during a craft project. Glitter can be hard to clean up.

It is important to note that things being spilled is part of life with children. We have some plastic table cloths that can take a glass of spilled water and protect the surface of the table. We have had meals at our house where two or three glasses of water are spilled in the same meal. We’re used to reaching for a towel or grabbing a handful of napkins to clean up a spill. We joke about spills and comment when we get through an entire meal without a spill. We encourage our grandchildren to learn about liquids and being careful. We remind them to place their glasses away from the edge of the table. We let them have the experience of pouring and filling water glasses. A spill is not a threat to our lifestyle.

And it is important to note that the amount of glitter spilled was small. I don’t know what that vial held, but I think it was less than a tablespoon. Nonetheless, after sweeping, vacuuming, and wet mopping he floor, I can still see the sparkle of glitter on the floor. Our son commented that our house has now been inaugurated and that glitter will be among the things we leave to the next owners when we sell the house. He might be right.

It is probably some form of justice that we got involved in cleaning up spilled glitter. We’ve been hearing about the challenges of glitter on the floor, in carpets and on other surfaces for years from church janitors. It is hard to resist using a bit of the substance when making certain kinds of crafts. The snowflakes our grandchildren made yesterday are quite beautiful with a bit of glitter on them. Fresh fallen snow sparkles in the sunshine and these craft snowflakes sparkle in the kitchen light. They really are pretty. We have been involved in crafts that use glitter for decades.

The joke at our house is that glitter has a half life of about a human generation. Half life is defined as the time required for half of the unstable nuclei of a substance to undergo their decay process. Every substance has a different half life. Some are extremely short. Carbon-10, for example, has a half-life of only 19 seconds. That means that the isotope isn’t encountered in nature and is known only in a laboratory. On the other hand xenon-124 has a half life of 1 sextillion years. That’s roughly 1 trillion times the age of the universe.

When we talk about the half life of glitter, we are thinking of substances that require a very long time to decay. We also are joking about what seems to be the phenomenon that any attempt in cleaning up glitter seems to reduce the amount spilled by only half. Since you can never clean up more than half of the glitter, there is always a bit remaining.

Whenever we talk of glitter at our house the story of the Christmas angels comes up. Years ago, in Rapid City, children dressed as angels for the Christmas pageant wore costumes that were made from cloth that had glitter on it. They looked pretty good as they walked up the church aisle during the pageant. They also were leaving behind glitter as they walked and as they sat in the pews. The pews in that church had pads on the seats. After the pageant a team of volunteers cleaning the church vacuumed the pads and carefully cleaned underneath them and all around the church. Still, years later, one of us would be talking to someone who had attended church and notice the sparkle of glitter on their clothing. The glitter from that Christmas pageant is still showing up at that church. We believe that people will be discovering glitter long after its source has been forgotten.

Despite our experiences, we will continue to create crafts that involve glitter. I suppose it is possible to have a house where all glitter is banned and none is used and no cleanup is necessary. That, however, isn’t the kind of house where we want to live. We want to have a home where grandchildren play, where the delight of sparkling objects is treasured above the potential mess, and where a glass of water spilled at dinner brings a smile and not a harsh rebuke. We want to live in a home where children come running to the door and greet us with a big hug. We want to have a home with toys and snacks and other things that delight children.

After all, there are people my age who have sustained injuries or developed illnesses that prevent them from being able to get down on the floor. I’m fortunate that I am able to do a bit of cleaning and can still get down on the floor to play with my grandchildren. And if it takes me a little bit longer to get up and if my joints creak a little, it is a mark of my age and a reminder of all of the good times I have had.

I’ll keep cleaning up glitter as the days go by. But I will also look forward to that glint of sparkle when I turn on the kitchen light first thing in the morning. It makes me happy to have a bit of sparkle in my life. If a bit of the glitter gets on my jacket or in my hair and someone else notices, I hope it makes them smile.

After all, I know something that lasts longer than the glitter - the memories of happy children bringing sparkle to my life.

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