This Too Shall Break

I’m washing a white bowl in the kitchen sink. The bowl is round, twelve inches in diameter, five inches deep. Hands down it’s my favorite bowl in our kitchen, useful for mixing pasta with a sauce, the perfect size for a big salad. In the cupboard where it’s kept, three smaller bowls nest inside it. They’re all three fine, serviceable bowls. But white bowl is in a class by itself. I use the other three bowls. White bowl I need.   

While I wash the bowl, Tizi sits at the kitchen table placing a call to English Gardens. It’s Christmas time, the season of lights. And glitter. I hate glitter. I hate the way it sticks around.

We’ve lugged the tree upstairs. Every year I tell her this is the last year I’m doing this. It’s a handsome tree. It came in three pieces that we could store in its huge forest-green durable plastic body bag, but Tizi doesn’t want to disassemble it. “You’ll smash it into its bag,” she says, “and the lights won’t work next year.” She’s probably right, on both accounts. So the tree stands in the corner of the basement eleven months of the year, fully assembled, and is then, with its dangling light cords, carried up the stairway in its three pieces, in an awkward, back breaking exercise of strength (“we can do this,” she says), a contest of wills (“next year we’re not doing this,” I say) (“Yes you are,” she says). 

She’s calling English Gardens to look for lights identical to the ones she bought 3-4 years ago, lights to illuminate her swags and runners outside.  This morning, something wonderful happens. 

She reads the English Gardens telephone number out loud, then taps the number into the phone. As she dials–that is, as she taps the numbers on the keypad–she says them outloud: 3-1-3 (reading), then says them outloud again: 3-1-3 (tapping). But this morning she doesn’t say them. She sings them–to the tune of Three Blind Mice: 3-1-3, 3-1-3, 2-7-2, 2-7-2… In 46 years of marriage, this has never happened before, and it is one more reason I am happy that we are married.

I would like it if she always did this Three Blind Mice thing.  If she did, I would ask her to make all the calls, do all the dialing, all the time, whatever the number. “Can you call Kroger for me?” “It looks like we’ll have to call the plumber. Can you please dial his number?” “Let’s give David and Dana a call and see how the baby is. Would it please you to dial the number?” 

And she would three-blind-mice the first six numbers, whatever they were: 2-4-8, 2-4-8, 6-7-2, 6-7-2….  

I would like it if she always did this Three Blind Mice thing.  If she did, I would ask her to make all the calls, do all the dialing, all the time, whatever the number.

Things would quickly fall apart in the dialing song after that. She would never get to “they all ran after the farmer’s wife.” Sure, you can think of numbers that work, for example 6-8, 4-7, 11-18.” But that’s not a phone number. You’re calling no one but the Verizon lady: “I’m sorry That number can’t be called as dialed.”  

Back in the dark ages, to control costs, we used to make calls to Italy with a service called Penny Talk, first tapping the ten-digit Penny Talk number, then tapping the four-digit Penny Talk password, then tapping the Italian number (country code + regional code + the person’s actual number). It was a headache. It took forever to dial. Sometimes I would flub the country code or regional code and I would have to start all over. A little Penny Talk song, to the tune of Three Blind Mice or maybe Row Row Row Your Boat” might have helped get through the whole dialing ordeal error-free, though something tells me we wouldn’t have made it to “she cut off their tails with a carving knife” and “did you ever see such a sight in your life.”  

I’ve rinsed and dried white bowl when she says, “Good news. They have the lights.”

One year we bought a beautiful ceramic bowl in Italy, outside the Gradara Castle, famous for Paolo and Francesca’s fatal dalliance. This bowl was art. It was ten inches in diameter, four inches deep, cylindrical rather than an overturned-spherical-cap-shaped bowl. It had little lion’s feet and bucolic scenes depicted in an artist’s capable hand, then glazed and fired. The lady in the store bubble wrapped it, then she double-bubble wrapped it, then she wrapped it in the store’s decorative paper and placed it in one of the store’s decorative bags. 

“I’ll carry the bowl in my bag,” Tizi said.

“You should carry the bowl in your bag,” I said.

“I’ll carry it with me on the plane,” Tizi said.

“You should carry it with you on the plane,” I said.

The bowl traveled 3000 miles. It made it all the way to Metro airport. It made it through US Customs. We piled our bags on a cart, which at that time you could roll out of the terminal to passenger-pickup parking, where your ride was waiting. It was dark, I remember, the parking lot lit by lights on tall poles. Ten feet from the car, the front wheels of the cart rolled down into a shallow crevice hidden in the shadows, the cart bucked, and the package slipped off onto the asphalt, making an audible tink. It didn’t explode. But the tink was unmistakable.

The lady in the store bubble wrapped it, then she double-bubble wrapped it, then she wrapped it in the store’s decorative paper and placed it in one of the store’s decorative bags. 

We never unwrapped it. It stayed in its bag for a year. Tizi wasn’t inconsolable, but she was pissed. I guess it was my fault.

“Don’t touch it,” she said.

“I think I can fix it.”

“Don’t touch it,” she said. “There are services you can pay to fix broken items.”

Pay. I didn’t really like that word. Why did man invent glue if not to solve problems like these?

Here’s what I learned in a covert operation. I could fix it. I could kind of put it back together. I also learned you can’t glue dust. 

“You can stick a plant in it,” I said.

“It’s not the same.”

Alas, shit happens. Stuff breaks. I woke up this morning remembering something I read 50 years ago, the mutability cantos. If I didn’t actually read them, I learned about mutability–nothing lasts. Checking this morning on the cantos, by Edmund Spenser, I find this: “Dame Nature presides over the conflict between Titaness Mutabilitie and god; she concludes that all things in life may fluctuate, but their essence remains constant.” Great. Essences.

I opened a glittery Christmas card a week ago from a friend I had lost touch with this year. Thank heaven, I thought. She’s still alive. I read her note, detected her kindness and characteristic wit. It was a gift.

I opened another card, first noting on the envelope, on the return address label, not Mr and Mrs, just the single Mrs. 

Bill died February 28, 2023. I will miss his kindness and characteristic wit. 

Washing white bowl, holding it in my hands, I think, “This too shall break.”  The blue willow dishes in our cupboard are showing their age. We find blue willow replacement pieces, plates and soup bowls and dessert dishes, at Home Depot. And lots of beautiful white serving pieces. White bowl can be replaced. But washing it, drying it, putting it away, studiously avoiding the tink, I like to feel I have my hands on something that will endure. 

Then, in a certain slant of light, when I least expect it, on the floor, on a chair, on my pantleg, I detect glitter.

Season’s Greetings.