ON THE MEND

Lately my family has been at the epicenter of a mysterious breakage vortex. There is slightly less mystery when you account for my son, whose default mode of moving around the house includes the use of furniture, firewood stacks, railings, and walls as choice surfaces off of which to push with the feet.

Nonetheless, the evidence that we are cursed mounts:

—broken model tractor (“the old Inner-Ashinal”/ translation: “the old International”) loses steering wheel and one of its rack-and-pinion push-rods / gets super-glued (repeat; repeat).

—Same tractor loses entire rear axle which husband replaces with a dowel he goes downtown for at the cost of about three hours of his life (I give you the estimable Route 13, theybies and gentlethems)

—This dowel is not the right size despite careful measurements so we introduce sanding and further glues; said tractor is still variously defunct but gets dragged all about with griefy moans punctuated by surges of hope (“Dada’ll have it fixed in no time? In NO TIME?”) This process has been going on since December and shows no sign of stopping.

—My daughter’s favorite red sweater, which she didn’t know was her favorite until it underwent significant trauma, was totaled by mice. I knit her a new one with perspiration-inducing urgency, even choosing the largest yarn possible so that it would only take me a week to finish. (She doesn’t care for it on account of its well-meaning but difficult and very hot bulk.)

—The Expensive But Good Investment Wool Long Johns the grandparents bought for the kids found their way into the dryer and went from four-year-old-sized to dollhouse-sized; I reconstituted them via bathtub witchcraft involving hair conditioner, patience, unfounded faith, profane incantation, and a great deal of wear and tear on my joints (they require hand-wringing and reshaping); reconstituted long johns found their way into the dryer again. I performed the ceremony again. Re-reconstituted long johns then gave out at the knees.

—Moths have found all the wool items in our house despite my essential oil placebo talismans. Wool being the currency of survival, respectability, moral good taste, artistry, and love between persons, this has had a degrading effect on my desire to see the universe as a basically neutral-to-benevolent place.

—The other model tractor we shouldn’t have bought my son (very clearly labeled “Not for play: ages 14 and up” on the box), an Oliver, lost its capacity to steer at the same time its cab door ceased closing fully. The child seemed to accept this, for now, since Oliver’s state isn’t as dire as Inner-Ashinal’s, and we are occasionally able to practice a triage mentality. Oliver sometimes participates in Romper Room activities, but is usually left standing on a surface eerily alone in a room full of toys, with his door ajar, as if gasping from the joy of having been chosen despite his surely temporary shortcomings.

—The “barn,” a sad-sack structural invention adjacent to our house, leans at an ever-greater angle, and if one of you would please just come push it over with a truck some night we’d be able to finally claim insurance on it and build a garage that can house more than a defunct chipper-shredder and the possum I patted in the dark because I thought it was the cat.

—The windows, the furnace, the septic tank (x3), the dryer outlet, and my husband’s car’s rotors (x3) have all bought the farm in the last year.

Add these and other examples to the kids’ penchant for watching YouTube videos with titles like “Will it Start??!! AMAZING tractor restoration, after 18+ years SUBMERGED IN MUDDY POND!!!!!!” and you get some interesting results.

We’ve started to see our desire to raise resilient children who are capable of patience, hard work, and the deployment of practical skills enacted in a slightly bonkers narrative they’ve developed around broken things. It pivots immediately to the near-superhuman reparative capabilities of their parents and grandparents: “I broke it! But it’s O-Kaaaaaaay. Dada’ll fix it in no time.” / “It doesn’t work! It’s O-Kaaaaaay. Grandmeg has a sewing kit with tools!”

The funny thing about misplaced hope is that it’s still hope.

And as long as there’s hope somewhere in the house, especially the really insistent kind in too-tight purple wool long johns, one feels obligated to keep trying, even long after the point when one might otherwise have ordered some Chipotle instead, leaving poor Oliver for dead. Maybe this is why some people have children, despite it being a terrible idea.

So really, what has happened is that our desire to make resilient humans out of our children, even though we’ve pretty much given up on things, has, against our wills, made us more resilient. That’s why baking cookies for someone else when you feel like pond scum can be a cleverer way to get out of the slop than baking them for yourself. It’s a very, very sneaky thing nature has done, making us feel good when we see something we did making someone else feel better.

My kids feel pretty good about the broken world, its prospects. So I persevere. It turns out that mending feels better to me than buying, and maybe even better than creating — there’s something about staying in it, staying with the broken thing. There’s something about adding layers of material and effort, as opposed to starting over.

The broken and mended thing, with its whole story apparent on its face, feels somehow sturdier. Stronger, a better bet. Sometimes, the very point of repair becomes the most loved. Eventually, maybe the action of repair becomes love itself.