I couldn’t sleep on Christmas Eve and I spent the night planning an imaginary pottery studio in the basement of the church called “Broken Things” where people would come for a pottery lesson and then write and burn something that is irretrievably broken in their life. I’d have each pottery student write down their brokenness, then pop it into the kiln for firing, together with their creation. It would be therapeutic “grief pottery”.
These days after Christmas are hard, deep and dark. We try to use humor to mask the pain as much as possible but then get overwhelmed and collapse into sobs multiple times a day. It’s great. My daughter Ashley’s friend from high school, Jazzy, died on Saturday Dec 23. Twenty days earlier, Ashley had called me to tell me that Jazzy was in a coma. She had had a seizure and had fallen into the pool that she was meant to be lifeguarding. I was supposed to be meeting a new friend at the National Women’s Art Museum, but there I was sequestered in the museum stairwell, cellphone plastered to my ear, cautioned by rule-abiding security guards to keep away from the exhibits, giving solace to my only daughter, my only living child, who was coming apart at the seams.
The pain, it seems, is relentless.
Andrew broke a corner off of the marble dining room table a few days ago. He was vacuuming, and setting chairs on top of the table to clear the floor. One of the chairs slipped and crashed to the floor, taking a chunk of the marble top down with it. This took an outsized emotional toll on me. I actually wept. I love that table and I don’t want things to change. The table is objectively the wrong shape for the space; it’s also the wrong color ( there’s too much white marble in the kitchen already, and a rectangle would fit better). I also often think I should get a table with extension leaves so that hosting would be easier, since we can only fit max 8 adults. But that table has given us so many memories that I’m not thinking logically. It’s my favorite possession that I shipped from Vancouver to DC. I’ve spent hours sitting at that table with a warm mug in hand, just being still.
So I started shopping for a new table, and there are plenty to pick from on Facebook Marketplace. We have a serious ongoing dining-table-turnover situation here in the DMV. Some options are both a better shape and color (I’ve been leaning towards an ovoid shaped Nero Marquina black marble), but I’m not keen on using my logic brain. It’s hard for me to make decisions based on cost, aesthetics, or function. I’m just thinking with my heart. And my heart doesn’t want to see any change! My heart can’t handle change! My heart wants to flee backwards in time.
Andrew has glued up the fragment and as I type this, we are hoping that it will hold.
If it doesn’t hold, then I will be getting a new table. But if the glue holds, then I want the status quo to stay forever. The old me, before Evan, loved change…loved new things. Now, I just want time to stop. I prefer a Kintsugi dining table – even one that is the wrong shape and the wrong color. And if I ever were to start a pottery studio, I would definitely name it “Broken Things”.