The
Year Everything Broke But My Heart:
Many things
break our hearts in life and if we're wise, we'll heed Leonard
Cohen's lyrics from his song Anthem, “There's a crack in
everything, that's how the light gets in.” So when things in my
life started to break throughout the summer of 2012, I tried to
appreciate that these were all just broken things. It began
with the dishwasher. Well, no big deal, my husband and I said
to each other, we'll just wash dishes by hand. Then the taps
on the main floor began spouting water everywhere. They needed to be
replaced. Then the taps on the tub. Same thing. When my husband
cut the pipe and brought it into the plumbing shop, the guy said “I
myself have never seen a pipe like this, but my boss has.”
Apparently, the pipe was as old as the house, which is 105 years old,
and it was no simple task to match it up. To make a long story short,
we had to order in special parts and for two weeks, we weren't able
to shower or bathe in our home. I found an old wash basin in the
basement, hauled it upstairs and began sponge bathing.
When my kids
called, I proudly bragged about the sponge-bathing and how we used to
sponge bath when I grew up and how we were only allowed to take a
bath once a week and even then, we were only allowed four inches of
water in the tub. Oh yes, wasn't I proud of myself for adapting and
simplifying and not complaining about the fact that we had to wait
for the plumbing parts to arrive. However, on about day seven, I
noticed that I was phoning the plumbing shop daily to see if the
parts had arrived yet. By day ten, I was now visiting my mother's
house on a regular basis in order to shower as I had come to despise
sponge bathing. By day fourteen, the parts had arrived. Out came the
blow torch, out came the tools and my husband went to work on that
miserable job. Twelve hours later, we had a functioning bath and
shower.
I thought my
streak of breakage was winding down. I was sadly mistaken. Next
went the vacuum cleaner. Then the car broke down.... to the tune of
$750. When we brought the car in to be fixed, we left it overnight at
the shop and during the night, it got “keyed”. Before this
incident, I did not know what it meant to be “keyed”. Now I
know. Someone takes a key and scratches a deep groove into the car,
from front to back. The car repairman felt badly for us and spray
painted the groove with a colour that sort of matches the car. Okay,
so now surely we've reached our quota for broken things, I
thought. There can't be more, can there?
The next
thing to go was the oven. Now you have to know that I love my 20-inch
wide gas stove. It's cooked thousands of meals since my firstborn
child was a toddler. It's got us through good winters and bad. It's
filled the house with the rich smells of rice puddings and baked
chickens and roasted vegetables. I wasn't ready to give up on my
stove, so we bought a small confection oven and I continued to use
the top of the stove, which was still functioning. Then one day the
stove began to leak gas. I called in the gasman and he broke it to
me as gently as possible but the sad truth was he had to condemn the
stove. Yes, it's true, stoves can be condemned, even stoves that
have served their masters faithfully for close to thirty years
without complaint.
But I'm
still not through my list. One week, it rained and rained and
rained. We have an old back porch and the wooden posts of that old
back porch, we discovered, weren't driven deep into the ground.
After all that rain, stepping out onto that back porch was a bit
like land surfing. The porch had literally moved ten inches away
from the back door. This is not exactly a safe thing when you have a
90-year-old aunt and an 88-year old uncle who both visit on a regular
basis. So guess what? We needed to dismantle our porch and down
went the clothesline along with the porch. Being that we don't have
a dryer, this added another annoying inconvenience to our lives.
So how many
broken things am I up to now? The dishwasher, the upstairs taps, the
downstairs taps, the car, the stove, the vacuum cleaner, the back
porch, the clothesline and did I mention the cassette player? (I
know it's pathetic that we still play cassettes but all of our best
music is on cassettes.) There were a few other things that may or may
not quite classify as broken, such as the birds living in our attic,
happily flying in and out from the holes in the old wooden boards
under the eaves. That was lots of fun but I think I'll save that
story for my next episode.
For months,
I've wanted to write about these broken things as a kind of cathartic
experience for myself, but I couldn't and guess why I couldn't....
because I had broken my wrist and couldn't write! But
I'm proud to report that my cast is off and I'm cresting a new year.
Let me complete my little story by saying that my mantra throughout
all these annoyances has been, “Things may be breaking around me
but I am grateful that it's not my heart that's broken.” Hence,
the title of my little story!
Happy 2013.
I wish for you all happy hearts with just enough cracking for the
light to find its way in!
