Broken Things
Some things can be fixed with tape. Others can’t.
In today’s Magic Circle with Diane Zinna, the prompt was “broken things,” and I immediately knew what I was going to write:
An old convertible. Snow falling. Christmas carols. Me and my friend Debbie, fully committed to creating a Hallmark moment on our work campus. And then—crack. The rear window, made of hard, uncooperative plastic, split as the top went down. It’s a good story. A funny one. The kind you tell—decades later—over drinks.
But that’s not what came out. Instead, I found myself writing about other broken things. The ones that lingered. The ones that shaped me in ways I didn’t fully understand at the time:
1. My beloved Show’N Tell. I don’t know how it broke, but it did. My parents took the contraption (a small TV-like box with an attached record-player and slot to insert a film strip) to the Show’N Tell “factory” for repair. Each day I returned from preschool, awash in excitement and anticipation. I forced myself to suppress a smile that wanted to burst off my face. Because smiling might somehow jinx the outcome. Day after day. For what seemed like forever. My Show’N Tell never came back from the “factory” because it never went there in the first place. They lied. My parents lied.
2. My parents lied again when my favorite doll broke. I wish I could remember what body part rendered a trip to the “doll hospital.” But that’s where they took her. Or so they said. My dolly never got better, never came back. Don’t ever get sick and go to the hospital, I told myself. Because I might never return.
3. I broke my GI Joe’s leg. On purpose. My friend Tommy had a broken leg that was in a cast. I made a cast for my GI Joe with tape. And I made a little hospital out of my dresser drawer. I promised GI Joe that he would get better. I checked his progress hourly. But when I removed the tape his leg was still broken.
4. I hated my baby brother. I hated him because his presence erased mine. When he was old enough to have breakable toys, I snuck into his room and broke them. My parents took his broken toys to the “factory.” But unlike my broken toys that never returned, Evan’s toys always returned shiny and new.
5. My little sister broke all the vinyl albums in my vast collection. On purpose. My beloved Beatles. The Beach Boys. Chicago. Billy Joel. Peter Frampton. Every stinking one of them. The ones I celebrated with, the ones I cried with, the ones that helped me through a devastating break up. My sister thought it would be fun to take them out of their sleeves and toss them, like frisbees, across the basement and into the cinderblock walls. I was away in the Navy so it didn’t matter, right? My parents just shrugged. Jill will be Jill.
6. When my oldest son was a toddler, tape fixed everything. His mantra: Can you tape it? Please tape it. Let’s tape it. Most of the time it worked. Until it didn’t. There was no tape in the universe strong enough to piece his broken heart back together when his father and I divorced.
The rear window on that old convertable made a clean, undeniable crack. I was able to fix it—temporarily—with duct tape. The rest of these breaks were quieter, and no amount of tape was ever going to fix them…
Oh Lynn, heartbreaking. So beautifully written.
Oh wow. Your broken experiences cut to the bone. I could feel the frustration and the injustices and I could see the kiddo logic that goes with those hurts. Thanks for sharing them here.