Broken

When I was around 7 years old I was tearing through the house with Duke on a leash. My mom had on a washstand a crystal bowl that had been my grandmother's. This was my dad's mother's bowl, not her mother, but someone she had loved so deeply. My mom took care of her while she was dying and grandma had give her the crystal bowl during that time. I'm not sure the circumstances of why, but it was precious to my mom. Well, this one day I mentioned I was running hard with the dog back and forth across the living room. We had wood floors and I liked to run and go into a slide on my bottom, and to be pulled by Duke to go even farther. This one terrible fated time though his leash became entangled around the stand, and he was too strong for me to control and the leash unhooked from the edge, caught the bottom ofthe bowl and lifted it up like a hand tossing it into the air, and it went crashing to the floor.. smashhhh.

I remember my mom actually screaming and collapsing to the floor around the shattered crystal. She was devasted. Her friend Rose was there and bent down to comfort her and as they started picking up the pieces, I went into a corner of the room and cowered, hiding my face... I was so frightened, mostly afraid that her love for me would now be gone forever because I knew my carelessness broke her poor heart. And I could never fix this, I had no way to unbreak the bowl. She was fragile, I knew this then.

The next thing my memory offers me about this day is walking slowly into her bedroom... it was dark so it must have been hours later, and I saw her laying on her side, head on her pillow with her little back turned away from me and it was still heaving with sobs. I remember my throat so constricted I could hardly breathe, the tears of remorse and loss stuck there, and then saying this hoarse sounding, "I'm sorry I broke your bowl... " My voice catching on the edge of the sorrow... She lifted herself up, turned toward me and then grabbed me with so much force I'd thought I'd crack, she held me so close burying my face into her warm body and it was time for me to collapse into tears. I was fragile, she knew this then, and she knew too that it was in her power to fix everything with her love, for my heart to be unbroken...