Crying over spilled milk

I can’t quite identify what got me weepy today.  It might have been someone’s accidental mention of a particularly bittersweet holiday, or the rising number of tasks for which I need to ask help.  Perhaps the sticking “f” key on my laptop annoyed me once too often.

But when I pulled out the loft ladder and crashed a stack of china onto the floor, I lost control.

I collapsed into a chair, sobbing, shaking.   I  didn’t particularly need as many dishes as I kept when I moved.  But the sight of jagged shards scattered across the kitchen unnerved me.  I liked those plates.  I bought them at thrift stores in that clumsy year between separation and my last divorce.  Jenny Rosen dragged me out of the house to search for them so I wouldn’t have to use my soon-to-be-ex-husband’s first wife’s dead mother’s dishes any more.  Now they’ve been heaped into a plastic bag and tossed in the trash, and I’m eating cold pasta salted with my falling tears.

I’m not complaining.  My heart cringes though, the sad twist of a soul with clumsy stitches over unhealed rends.  I search for consolation:  The ten-dollar cabinet; a successful community meeting; glorious blue skies for three days’ running while back home piles of snow stopped traffic and downed power lines.  I don’t feel much better.  I struggle to grasp the momentum, wrapping the spastic fingers of my lily-white hands around the fleeting wisp of joyfulness with which I started this day, twelve hours and a life-time ago.

It’s the thirteenth day of the sixty-first month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

John Denver, “Some Days Are Diamonds”

2 thoughts on “Crying over spilled milk

  1. Josephine Carroll

    I’m so sorry this happened today. Change can be hard and emotions can hit at unexpected times. I hope tomorrow is better than today.

    Reply
  2. Kati

    Boy did this ever hit a sore spot. I so deeply understand your sobbing and shaking and that “last straw” feeling. Be kind to yourself tomorrow and take a few extra minutes to breathe. And send me your address again.

    Reply

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