On Broken Things and Parenthood

Last week, my 3-year old got a present from her grandfather: a hand-painted ceramic owl piggy bank that he brought back from Italy. My daughter loved it —  was beautiful and rare and hers. Forty-eight hours later she smashed it on the kitchen floor.

It was a strange moment. She hadn’t done it on purpose, although I’m sure part of her was curious to see what would happen. Still, we could see that the look on her face was one of confusion, of shock, of loss.

She asked: "Is it broken?"
"Yes it’s broken."
"Can you fix it?"
"No, we can’t. Sometimes things are broken so bad they can’t be fixed."
"We can get a new one."
"There was only one of these, and it came from very far away. Also, you can’t just get something new whenever you want. You have to take care of special things."

She nodded slowly, sadly, blankly. The thing that seemed to upset her the most wasn’t the loss of the owl, although she clearly mourned it. It was the permanence of broken things.

I think one of the greatest pressures of parenthood is to create stability, normalcy, routine. We want our kids to feel safe, secure, to have a gently expanding comprehension of the world. Change is terrifying, even changes for the better. But sometimes rather than wading into the shallow end of new experiences we’re thrown into the deep.

When the owl hit the floor it was unmistakable: things change, they change fast, they change forever. I wish I could have glued that piggy bank back together so expertly she’d never see the cracks.

Instead I hugged her.

It was all I could do.