BREAKING THINGS by Judy Fowler

Why was I breaking things? 

As I struggled to hang heavy curtains I'd sewn and lined, their fabric caught on the neck of a vintage pink vase and toppled that lovely heirloom to the floor. I froze. Four large pieces and smaller shards of irreplaceable glass lay near my feet. I wanted the pieces to jump up and put themselves back together. The vase had previously belonged to a grandmother I'd only known for four years before she died. 

I'd recently retired. The broken vase had exposed a feeling I'd always had but never acknowledged. Though numerous sense memories of my grandmother's spirit and behavior still came to mind, I'd never felt I had the right to claim that knowledge because other family members knew her so much longer than I did. 

Was it only a coincidence that I broke the vase while hanging homemade curtains, something I'd never attempted to make until I retired? If so, the coincidence was an odd one since she'd had to move frequently in her lifetime, and making a house into a home with homemade curtains and slipcovers was something for which she was known. Breaking the vase challenged me to own that same drive in myself as I started my creative journey in retirement. 

Several days later, I broke another heirloom, one I still miss. On that day, I had an uncontrollable urge to lift--with one hand--the antique brass lamp with its large milk glass shade off the table it sat on so I could stabilize the table leg with a matchbook. The shade and the base weren't attached, and the white milk glass fell off and broke into pieces.

These pieces of my family's past had pride of place for decades in my homes. I could no longer be trusted as a caretaker. Was I just breaking things or was I breaking taboos against breaking things? 

My friend Rita has a related breaking things story that also happens to involve a table leg.

"I lived in my parents' house since they died. About a month after I retired," she told me, "The air-conditioner downstairs went out. The repair people wanted to move a certain table to get to the AC. I saw them put their hands on the table. I shouted at them to stop. "That table hasn't been moved for fifty years! Its leg is loose." 

She had no idea how long she'd felt on edge about the placement of that table. "That loose leg determined how the living room was arranged. Mama and I never owned the living room. The table with its loose leg did. I'd never dared move it from where Daddy pushed it when the leg got loose. I'd never tried to make the room my own."  

Soon after my two incidents, I attended a writing workshop on ekphrastic poetry. The teacher asked us to choose from an array of photos, sculptures, and paintings. We were to write a poem narrated by some object in the work of art.

I chose a painting of a sleeping dog cuddling a worn-out tennis ball. A month earlier, I might have written from the point of view of the dog, but that day I wrote my poem from the ball's point of view. Creating its point of view exhilarated me.

One participant who usually watched us write and tallied the receipts from class told the teacher she wasn't a poet. "Try it," the teacher challenged her. 

She chose the sculptured marble bust of a saint. I heard mumbles of frustration from her as she began to write, but after that, she wrote steadily. 

Still, she looked frightened when asked to read her poem. The teacher recommended she start at the second line, the line she wrote after breaking the taboo that she wasn't a poet.

Her poem's narrator, a child raised in a devout Catholic home and schooled by nuns, told of the chilling effect the saint's cold, marble-like mask had on her own white-hot faith. The lines blew us away with their insight and beauty.

Phillip, a writer friend, also reports breaking something in retirement. He lived in an orphanage as a boy with peers who told him never to tell a joke because he had no sense of humor. He made it to the end of an active-duty military career, including combat in World War II and Korea, before cracking one. 

"Now, I don't care what others think. I joke when I feel like it." 

His good-natured, love-infused joke poems evoke laugh-out-loud responses from our critique group. He finds his verse so funny that he chuckles along with us. 

What have you broken since you retired?