Beautiful and Twice Broken

It was the third day of our Venetian vacation when we boarded the boat and headed to Murano, the island of blown glass.

We were searching for a piece of Venetian glass that would commemorate the second anniversary of our marriage.  

From the front row of the factory, we observed a craftsman shape red-hot glass into a regal blue stallion who balanced upright, with two front legs waving high in the air. His head and mane were flung sideways in the invisible breeze. It happened in moments and we paid little attention to the finished piece. To illustrate how hot it is, they light a piece of paper on fire. We took more notice of the paper fragment that burst into flames when the tip touched the scorching piece than we paid to the entire process.

Show over, sculpted horse cooling, we took an escorted stroll through the factory. Toward the end of our tour, we discovered a beautiful flat piece that could be commissioned in blue and easily slip into the contemporary design of our home.

But, after careful deliberation, we decided the price was more than we wanted to spend. We prepared to walk away and find something less pricey.

But in a jiffy, the Murano factory scion appeared at our table. Genetics had never cast a better specimen in the role of owner’s son. A gorgeous 30-something Italian man with a black wavy bob appeared. He was wearing a cashmere sweater carelessly flung over his perfectly pressed, but untucked, white shirt while sockless Italian loafers bookended the ensemble. We listened to his enchanting pitch. He carefully reviewed the meticulous craftsmanship of the renowned artist who would fire our bespoke piece. Helpless to lasso his charm, his pitch was more museum tour lecture than sales invitation.

However, we resisted the purchase, and the charisma.

For a long five minutes.

Finally, with a few concessions on both sides, we agreed to purchase the plate. And with the agreement, he brought out the horse that had been fired and designed in our presence.

It was his personal gift to us. Like an impromptu magic show, the horse showed up on the table and was promptly whisked away for professional wrapping. Encased in plain brown wrapping paper, B. carried the package as carefully as he would carry a newborn from the hospital nursery to the car.  We tucked the package in a safe compartment of the boat while we lunched in Burano, the next island on our agenda. Heading back to the boat in the 4:00 light, after a bottle of white wine, Italian linguine with clam sauce, and a day of perfect sunshine, we declared that the day was one of our one in a million.  

the horse being made

We determined to carry the horse home in our carry-on roller. B. was in charge of monitoring the doormen and porters. It being in a soft sided case, we needed to insure it did not find its way to the bottom of our ever-too-much load of luggage. From the hotel to the boat to the airplane to the taxi ride to our Manhattan apartment and back to the airport the next day for our short trip to Palm Beach, we had the horse ensconced in the proper care.

Finally landing in Palm Beach, exhausted from the three-week journey, he lifted the bag from the overhead and dropped it with abandon to the floor of the airplane.

I gave him a look.

“What?” He looked at me blankly.

“It has the horse.”  

Not that evening, but the next day, we laid the brown wrap on the kitchen counter and began the unwrapping.

I felt the whole of the firm belly and head and had good reason to believe that the blue horse had survived the fall intact. Only the last unfolding revealed a rounded piece separated from the rest. B. apologized as we lifted the creature into the air so that we could clearly assess the damage.

“He’s a tailless horse,” I declared. “I have seen many.”

However, we soon discovered that the tail was the foundation of the horse’s magnificent pose. Without the tail, he needed to lie limply on his side. Gorilla glue I took to that tail to no avail.

R., our housekeeper, came the next day and declared that she had a glass glue that would fix it promptly. 

We waited patiently while the glue dried. Until, at last, with my test of a tentative standing it appeared that he could, once again, stand alone.

I placed him at eye level in the wall unit of the family room.  

Back in his glory, with an invisible fix connecting his glorious tail, the light turned the blue and gleaming glass to liquid.  

I was in the far bedroom when I heard the crash. I couldn’t imagine what could have boomed so loudly. There on the floor, from an eye level height, the horse had fallen.

The tail, once again, rested beside him, still unbroken. But now the two front legs had shattered, impossible to piece together.

“I’ll get you another one,” B. soothed as I raked the smashed parts and the still-intact body into a container.

“I don’t want another one,” I belted out with the petulance of a five-year-old child. “He may have some broken parts, but he is not broken. He can survive without the shattered parts.”

B. just looked at me, not sure what pocket of the universe had delivered my unwavering attachment to this twice-broken piece of glass.

The poor guy rested on his side, in the middle of a paper plate, atop the kitchen bar. On about the third day, I determined that it was time to wrap the little one in some paper towels and throw him in a Publix grocery bag and deliver him to the trash.

With the resolution, a slight flicker of sunlight made its way through the dreariness that preceded Hurricane Milton and pierced through the horse’s glorious translucent mane.

I thought, I will stand him in a vase, design him a walker/wheelchair, so to speak. I reached for an opaque one that would camouflage his disfigurement. All I saw was the neck and the head. The whole arrangement looked bizarre, actually a good representation of my baffling obsession with my broken horse.

I found a semi-transparent goblet with lines, which only made you question why a horse would be stuck in a wine glass. I fell back on my decision to throw the sucker away but left him standing in less than optimal circumstances while I went about listening to episode one of the podcast I’d started earlier in the day.

The show, The Balance Dilemma, hosted by two female lawyers, now has 80 episodes. Episode one described their nativity story. They met and had a natural affinity but felt that the first meeting was greatly enhanced by the spontaneous outpouring of issues that one of them was going through that particular day.

They spoke more about how the admission of vulnerability not only bonded them on the spot but gave them the staying power to start a venture together.

There’s a sweet spot in people. I don’t want to know your heart was broken 100 times by an equal number of men in my first introduction. But chemistry begins when you let me know your life ain’t perfect either.

It was Annie Lamott who developed the outside-in concept.

“Never compare your insides to everyone else’s outsides.”

Sounds like an easy task, but even with Annie’s observation, we still imagine that the outside veneer defines the interior structure. We know what’s wrong with us, and we assume they have none of that same stuff milling around underneath their buffed exterior. Other people’s lives are easier, smoother, more glamourous than ours.

Some time ago, I had an experience with one of my spiritual friends. I say spiritual because we had not known each long nor had we spent a lot of time together. However, from the time of our first meeting, there was a sense of déjà vu.

When she lost her significant other, I sent my sympathy via text and email. Being the private person she was I offered to drop by, but only if she thought that could help. I emphasized that I had lost a husband, a sister and an assortment of other loved ones, and that I could plan to just be there. 

On the morning of the visit, I felt unsteady. I knew I was not going to just re-tell my story; I was going to re-feel my story.

My friend is beautiful. Her posture is perfect, her neck is never bent forward at an awkward angle. Nor has she ever left her home with wet hair or an unpressed blouse.

If I spend five minutes with her, I aspire to do everything precisely as she does it. She is my elegance muse.

Perched upright on the sofa next to me, I listened as she told me she was crushed, actually shattered into a million pieces.

Then she queried me. She wanted to know how my late husband had died, how long I had stayed in our house after and if I had gone to counseling after his death. She would tell a bit of her story and then ask about mine. Six months, I answered to the house tenure question and no to counseling at the time, but I did advise it for her.

She confessed that she could not concentrate and therefore could not read, which frustrated her greatly as she was a voracious reader and she had hoped that it could deliver her an escape.

No one can read when this kind of tightrope stress courses through the body, I reported back. We should consider that we are doing well when we can at least steady ourselves on the cable that stretches from here to there.

But eventually, we all read again. Until then watch movies, stare into space and be patient with yourself.

There were hundreds of lesser questions, small in nature and unconsciously structured to avoid the real fear. What is going to happen to me? Will these cuts ever heal? Will I ever be able to feel the way I did before?

Those queries are too sharp and too fresh to venture a deliberation.  

When I got in the car to leave, I felt like my mouth had been swiped with soft white cotton and I recognized the old familiar headband ache that stretched tight across my brow.      

To offer hope of renewal to my friend, I’d revisited some of my most vulnerable soft spots: I told her it been almost impossible for me to ever cry and how losing my small black and white dog had finally coughed up the scream that had simmered beneath the surface for more than a few decades.

“Oh yes,” she had said, “I know that scream.”

“But it wasn’t a dog that brought it out of you,” I countered.

“It doesn’t matter, does it? How it went, I mean. Weren’t things better when it was gone?”

She leveled her eyes at me, and, without a word, the new and more intimate us was gracefully conceived.

This broken horse is still on my desk. The left front leg is cut off below the knee, but with the help of the other he is able to brace against the glass and stand. His tail and one of his hind legs lie helplessly beneath him. I place him on the upper desk corner where the mid-morning sun paints revolving stars around his parts.

I would never have appreciated him so well had he not shown me how to be beautiful and twice-broken, all at the same time.