humpty dumpty kind of week

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

All the king's horses and all the king's men

Couldn't put Humpty together again

do you remember this nursery rhyme from childhood? it's kind of a depressing one- right? it came to mind this morning as i thought about the past week. the other day the girls were in the backyard playing; m was jumproping and somehow her jumprope snagged one of my pots of succulents, which brought it crashing down, breaking the pot into chunks and shards of pottery all over the concrete. the succulents fared better, but lots of their leaves had broken off upon impact, so tiny fleshy succulent pieces were scattered in among the broken pot and the hunks of dislodged soil. of course it was one of my favorite pots, because that's how things often go. with a little prodding from matt she was not only repentant but helpful in trying to help clean it up. 

but within minutes i could tell she felt bad enough what had happened that she was wishing it hadn't happened at all and she was saying, "it's ok though, right, mommy? you can go buy another one can't you?" no. i couldn't. so for the umpteenth time (because things like this seem to happen a lot when you have small people in your house) i had to explain that it was an accident, that i know she didn't mean to do it, but that also sometimes you can't fix things, sometimes they are broken and you can't glue them back together even if you really want to. 

other times you break things like succulents, which have the capacity to regrow or grow from broken spots; it takes a while and the spots where the leaves broke off are permanently a teensy bit wonky or the regrowth comes out in slightly different patterns. over time the plant is resilient enough that even the little leaves that fell off can form their own new succulent plants. 

this week i feel that again i'm grieving again the things in my family's life that are broken: primarily fallout from stuff with my dad from five years ago. most of the time i feel like we are all collectively and (speaking for myself) individually in a pretty healthy and healed place, and then other times i realize how much damage my dad's actions caused, and how our family will never be the same. that makes me sad. and of course, sometimes i miss having a dad. hoping and believing the brokenness is broken in a succulent-regrowing-itself-kind-of-a-way and not in a irreparable-shards-of-pottery or humpty dumpty kind of a way. (even if some days it feels pretty hard with no good at all.)