Quote of the day: “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” —Leonard Cohen
Broken Martini Glass
For the past two days I’ve been unpacking beautiful glass things that belonged to my mother-in-law. Since my husband was the sole remaining son, we inherited all of her things when she died, including a LOT of beautiful glasses, cups, stemware, you name it.
We packed a lot of her special things up and left them in the garage, thinking that we could do something with them the next summer. Many summers later, I decided it was time to sort through things, give them to family if they wanted them, or find other loving homes for them.
I unpacked five boxes of mostly glassware. A gorgeous set of 6 martini glasses were my favorite finds. They were so beautiful it made me want to take up drinking martinis just so that I could enjoy holding one of those lovely martini glasses. I was photographing them so that we could offer them to extended family members before selling or donating them (there’s only so much room in my cupboards), when I accidentally bumped one of the martini glasses and broke it.
“Damn!” I exclaimed, “I wish I hadn’t done that! If only I had been a little more careful.” Then I realized that what’s done is done. There is no way to go back in time and redo our lives like in the movie Ground Hog’s Day. I could spend a lot of energy wishing things were different, but once something is broken, it’s broken. This was a relatively minor breakage of a thing I wasn’t that attached to and still I needed to remind myself to let go of regret and focus on looking forward instead of backward.
Sometimes we find hidden blessings in broken things, broken hearts, broken dreams. Sometimes we don’t. But if there’s one thing we all have in common, it’s brokenness somewhere in our lives. I choose to accept it and celebrate the cracks as places were the light gets in.
My Mother's Day Orchid
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