Hardship Trapped in a Cabinet

Recycling pain into peace.

“What happened to the china cabinet?” I asked my mother.

We were sitting in the dining room of the house she’d just moved into, after splitting with my dad. As I looked across the table at the antique wooden case that had been in the family since I was a kid, I’d noticed that the glass in one of its windows was missing. Instead of a hazy reflection of myself I saw only black, a vacuum. The incongruous collection of nick-nacks, souvenirs and other castoff items inside were exposed to the stale air of the little house that sat on the opposite end of town from where we’d always lived.

“Oh, You-Know-Who had one of his temper tantrums,” she said, reminding me I’d asked a question. “I‘ll get it fixed.”

My dad had broken stuff before, but I’d never noticed this pane being gone. Maybe it wasn’t surprising I hadn’t known about it. I’d moved far away specifically to stop having to hear about these dramatic episodes. My mom lived alone, now, and I was trying to finally focus on myself, my young family, a career, a life of my own. I was settling into the feeling of being done protecting her.

A few years later, when the china cabinet made its way into my own house, I could see that my mom had been true to her word. The glass had been fixed, leaving no clue that anything was…