Broken Things that Go Unfixed or Unreplaced

I remember a bed in my mother’s guest room that only had three legs. Sleeping on it felt like floating on a raft in the high seas.

I have a few pairs of glasses with one arm missing and even one pair with both an arm and a lens missing which I wore once because I couldn’t find any others and I really wanted to read before bed.

I once bought a new pair of beautiful shoes for my sister’s wedding and didn’t open the box until the day, and when I did, both were for the left foot. I actually considered wearing them anyway because I loved them so much, and if you go to your closet right now and try on two left shoes you will know exactly why this makes me laugh out loud every time I remember it.

Darla’s favorite toy when she was three was a porcelain cat that she would drop and shatter once every week. Bub put it together with special glue and seemed to enjoy the process of fitting it back like a puzzle so much that I sometimes wonder if he was the one who kept knocking it on the ground. We never got another one, or even tried to encourage a different toy.

We lived in an apartment once where you could lock yourself into the bathroom accidentally because the lock was on the inside of the door and not on the knobs. Instead of changing it though, we took the risk, and once I got locked in there for half an hour before Mo (age 15) was able to shimmy a screw driver in the side and push the button.

I had a pair of black pants that I loved that I spilled bleach on, and rather than get a new pair, I colored the stain in with a black sharpie pen.

I have a drawer missing a handle, and to open it I have to slide a fingernail into the crevice where it sits and pull. It hurts every time.