The Coffee Cup

Once upon a time, there was a coffee cup.  He sat upon a shelf with lots of coffee cup buddies, all of them waiting for someone to fall in love with them, buy them, and put them to good use.  Some coffee cups dreamed of being Christmas presents, some of being Birthday presents, some of being the mug of choice for a high powered executive.  This coffee cup, though, didn't know what he wanted.  He just wanted to be useful.  Day after day, he watched as people came through the doors of his coffee shop.  He would fill up with wonder and excitement, the hope of today being the day he became useful filling his warm little heart.  And day after day, he sighed in sadness as he was not picked.  He wasn't chipped.  He was a great, bright orange color that seemed very popular.  He was the same size as his friends.  There was nothing marking him as any different.  And yet... *sigh* and yet, he began to feel like he wasn't good enough.  He began to question what was wrong with him that made him not worthy of being chosen.  He just wanted to be useful.  Why wasn't anyone picking him?  People picked him up, looked him over, and went on to the cup next to him without even looking at that one.

He wondered if he needed to be moved to a new position on the shelf and he figured if he thought hard enough, he could push himself off the edge of the shelf so someone would have to move him.  He succeeded.  But in the process, he got chipped around his rim.  He was embarrassed by this obvious blemish.  His friends told him it was okay.  People still picked chipped cups all the time.  But he became angry.  And his color started to become muddy as his anger grew.  His friends still tried to encourage him, but he shrank away from them, feeling they must internally be laughing at his poor coloring.  In shrinking away from his friends, he began to become smaller.

His anger gave way to sadness, and he believed himself now completely unworthy of notice.  Feeling completely worthless, he decided he would try to jump off the shelf again.  Maybe if he got too badly cracked to use, someone would throw him away and he wouldn't have to face the people every day.  He didn't like the thought of being in the garbage with the stinky old coffee grounds.  But it certainly seemed better than watching his friends leave one by one and knowing no one wanted him

As he contemplated the idea of jumping off the shelf, he failed to notice the little boy that was peering up in delight at all the mugs.  He kept grabbing at his mother's sleeve and pointing at the chipped, muddy colored, small mug.  "Mommy, I like that one.  It needs a home.  Please?!" His mother contemplated the cup and told him that she would think about it.  The little boy pouted.  The cup then noticed the boy.  Seeing the sadness on the boy's face, he thought, I must make this little boy smile.  But how?  As he thought, the little boy started to turn away.  In desperation to keep the boy's attention, he did the only thing he could think of.  He jumped with all his might off the shelf.  The boy saw the movement out of the corner of his eye.  He turned just in time to catch the cup.

"Look, Mommy!  The cup jumped into my arms.  Please, can't we take it home?  It needs a home.  Just like I did when you and Daddy took me in.  Please, please, please?!"

His mother smiled, "Ok, honey.  It will be your adoption cup."

It was then that the cup noticed the boy and his mother were in fancy clothes.  I bet they're heading to his adoption!  Sure enough, after paying for the mug and her coffee, the boy's mother drove to the court house.

That night, after the boy went to bed, the mug heard the mother talking to the father.  "I should have seen it earlier, before the mug fell off the counter.  It was the perfect example for what adoption has been for us.  We didn't take in the little boy that anyone would take.  We took in the one who was a little smaller than his peers, a little more difficult to determine his moods, a little rough around the edges.  That cup is smaller than the other ones at the store, it's hard to figure out just what color it is, and it's a little chipped around the edges.  Our little boy saw the need for this cup to have a home just like he needed a home.  And I missed it.  Then the cup just falls off the shelf into our son's arms.  Just like how adoption just kind of fell into our laps unexpectedly."

"Then the mug really is perfect," the boy's father said as he lovingly washed and dried the cup.  He put it on the shelf next to some of the cups this cup recognized from the store.  They complained about not being gifts, not being the mug of choice for corporate executives, of loosing some of their original glory of perfect mugness.  But not this cup.  He proudly enjoyed being used every day by the little boy, of becoming faded by the years of use, of gaining a few more chips along the way, and of always knowing that he was the symbol of what the boy meant to his family: Everything.