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”
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.
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.