What to Do With A Broken Wine Glass
By Summer Bacon
My brother, Britt, and his family came to visit me for my 50th birthday in June this year. This was my greatest birthday wish, come true. (My second wish was to have hot fudge sundaes instead of a traditional birthday cake. And, yes, this wish was also granted, with whipped cream and a cherry on top!)
Britt has always been my hero. He's a great guy, with enormous talent, a truly friendly disposition, a smattering of the absurd, a wee bit sarcastic at times, but very funny, a gentle and compassionate nature, a great mind, and, well, I just think he rocks. He is also an extraordinary musician, a sound engineer for movie trailers by day, reads voraciously at night, and has to be doing something creative at all times, whether it's perfecting his latest rustic loaf of sourdough bread made from homemade starter, or creating blog sites for friends in whom he believes. He's one amazing person, and (yes, ladies) he's also a family man, married for decades now.
The reason I am telling you about him is that he reminded me of something when he was visiting me in Sedona.
"Summy, I know you see Mom and Dad all the time, so you might not notice...but, our parents have created a lot of !*#% in their lives!"
What he meant is that our parents, who are hyper-creative, have created a lot of cool artwork. I mean, A LOT.
I remember when I was around seventeen years old, a realtor came into our house and took one look around and said, "My God! Do you take inventory in here?"
Every wall of my childhood home was adorned with paintings, batiks, handmade instruments, macrame, and paper mache sculptures. Not a corner was spared. Even the master bedroom ceiling was turned into a collage of photos taken from old Life magazines.
Our dining room table was made of an old oil barrel topped with a square of plywood that was collaged with more photos and artwork encased in a resin topping. It made for great dinner conversation when new guests arrived.
The family phone (an old French style one) rested in a real phone booth. Our "couch" was an old bench from a bus stop. The comfy seats in the house were piles of cushions and pillows placed strategically so that the sunlight hit them just perfectly for a delicious afternoon nap. Often the pillows were surrounded by lacy curtains that made me feel like a princess.
Daddy built the living room stereo case from old two-by-fours and weathered pieces of copper that he graciously let Britt and me hammer with dents to make it look old and rustic. It still graces their house, even after years of working overtime as seating for six during the many hootenannies and gatherings they hosted through the years.
When my parents moved to a larger home in Arizona, my mother's creative spirit went into overdrive. Not a scrap of paper, fabric or a ring from a bottle neck went to the dump. Old watches were turned into a masterpiece that now hangs in the guest bathroom. Rabbit cookie cutters hang gracefully below masks made of yarn and recycled string from gift packages.
I guess you could say, my parents were green way before it was cool to be green.
But, there's more to this story than just overloading you with too much information about my childhood home life. And, this isn't a story about recycling, either.
It's about love. It's about how to create magic when life seems, at times, to be like a dance of adversity, rather than a dance of wonder.
Rewind about thirty years. That old stereo case saw its fair share of wine spills, I am certain. And, with spilled wine, there are often broken wine glasses that follow. Did my mother jump from her chair wild and crazed, bearing Handiwipes and Mr. Clean? Did she shriek in horror at the broken wine stem of the crystal glass left to her by her mother? No. She would let out a delighted "whoop," stand up and begin a solitary round of applause, and immediately go to work consoling the person who had let the glass slip from their tipsy clasp.
"Oh, don't worry, darling! Why, it's good luck to spill wine!" she said joyfully, as she mopped up the wine with whatever napkin was handy, swept up the broken glass, and placed it just-so at the center of the table, while almost simultaneously managing to replace it with a new, full glass of wine.
Then she would disappear and re-emerge with a hot glue gun, a piece of yarn or string, a small piece of fabric, and a bead. She would turn the unbroken cup end of the wine glass upside down, careful not to cut herself on the broken stem. Right there at the dinner table, as people were passing the curry or steaming hot lentils around her, Mom would wrap the broken stem with fabric, as carefully as she would dress a wound. Then she would drip some hot glue inside the cup, and laugh as she tried to drop yarn down into it. Once it stuck and cooled into place, she would tie a bead to the loose end of the string, turn the glass upside down once again, and voilå, to everyone's amazement and delight, she would ring the bell that she had just created from disaster. I can tell you, we had a lot of bells in our house, and very few wine glasses. The bottom end of the broken wine glass, by the way, would be reserved for another art project.
I grew up in a household that knew how to party. I'm not talking about some rock star drugs-and-sex kind of party. I'm talking about singing folk music until midnight, or chanting "hari om" over the poori, a delicious, crackly, deep-fried tortilla-style dough that our Indian friend, Swami Parampanthi, taught us to make. The more you chanted "hari om," the bigger the dough would puff up in the hot oil as you patted it with a wooden spoon. (We tried not chanting just to see whether it made a difference, and by golly, we couldn't get a puff bigger than a cottonball.)
I'm talking about turning a broken wine glass into fun.
Okay. Life might not be one big party all of the time, but I believe that, in an ideal world, it can be. Life should be a labor of love, not hate. We should be comforting, not hurting each other. When a wine glass breaks, so what? Throw it away. Get another one. Turn it into artwork. Pour more wine.
Love is the healer. It always has been, and always will be. No matter the circumstances, no matter the pain, love is the only healer, the only redeemer. Where there is love acknowledged, God is acknowledged. And, with God, all things are possible.
I'm resisting temptation to climb on top of my soap box now and pontificate about other things, such as, "What part of 'thou shalt not kill do we not understand!'" But, my soap box is currently being used for more important things, such as a catch-all for my children's keepsakes, and a table for my unborn grandchildren to serve their stuffed animals tea and cookies. I guess being green runs in the family.
And, of course, we all end up learning that which we are teaching. One day my mother accidentally broke the cherished glass egg dish that her mother had left to her. Grandma apparently always had the fresh chicken eggs on the counter in that dish, and my Mom did the same with it. But, one day the egg dish fell to floor, and broke into quite a few pieces. I remember coming home that day, and Mom was pretty shattered too. She lamented the dish, but knew that her mother, if alive, would not only have forgiven her, but probably would have given her a hug, and maybe have Grandpa go and buy her a scoop of ice cream to help dry her remorseful tears.
Nevertheless, it didn't seem like this moment was going to be easily fixed with a hot glue gun, some yarn, a piece of fabric, and a bead. I felt so sad for my Mom.
The broken pieces remained on the counter top in another bowl for quite awhile. It was kind of like watching the starter for bread brewing on the counter, becoming smelly and yeasty; the wonderful base for delicious bread in the days to come.
Finally, one day I came home and smelled the distinctive pungency of drying acrylic paint and hot glue (which strangely, smells like yeasty bread starter). There, on the counter, my mother had painted a simple board, and carefully glued the pieces of the egg dish to it, as close to the shape in which dish had broken.
In her own handwriting, she wrote carefully at the bottom, "Sorry, Mom. Love, Lisa." Another work of art. Another labor of love.
***
Come inside and take a peek around at my parents' amazing !*#% . Britt was inspired to photograph everything in their home, and to start posting it in an online blog. This is just a start, but a labor of love he will finish one day. Enjoy.
Visit his blog at: http://bleepmyparentsmake.blogspot.com/