I’ve never cried over split milk, but I have wept over broken wine glasses.
Two got broken this weekend, and I opted to shrug and move on.
I did not grow up with a lot of money, so I’m overly cautious about keeping what I own clean, in good repair, not broken. I don’t need to be this way anymore, but it’s hardwired.
Spill something on a favorite sweater I’ve had for 10 years and worn scores of times? I cringe.
Throw out an expensive dress shirt that has frayed after so many years that the cost per wearing is probably a $1 at this point? Maybe I can switch it to the weekend, under-the-sweater pile.
This is where the wine glasses come in. When my wife and I got married, we had two apartments’ worth of stuff and she already had fancy plates and silver from her grandmother. We didn’t need or want any of the traditional wedding registry gifts. So we picked fun things. And for me, that meant lots of Reidel wine glasses, in every shape I could imagine for every type of wine I might one day try.
Over the years, many have been broken. I only have one of the original pinot noir glasses and none of the audacious Bordeaux goblets. All of the martini glasses are in tact, a nod to parental temperance more than care.
After some friends left last weekend, my youngest daughter jumped to help with the cleanup. The sooner we got it done, the sooner we could watch Zootopia 2.
She wanted to do it all. Load the dishwasher. Clean out the serving bowls. Wash the wine glasses. I almost hesitated on the last part. But before I could she had washed one perfectly and looked so proud for having cleaned something so fragile.
When she broke the first one, she walked over to me holding the two pieces. Yikes! I tossed them out without anyone getting caught.
A few minutes later, she came in to watch Zootopia. I noticed we were down another wine glass.
“Where did the other one go?”
“I broke it, so I threw it in the recycling.”
She’d watched me do that with the first one so did the same with the second one. She was matter of fact about it – mistakes happen, glass breaks – and so was I.
Why didn’t I care?
1) The glass is broken. No way to undo that.
2) My daughter was trying. I want her to try. She wasn’t careless. She was washing them, and they broke and, well, they’ve have held a lot of wine in their time.
3) My reaction was going to determine her reaction. If I scream, she shuts down. If I’m blasé, she keeps working and starts to understand mistakes happen.
That’s one to remember. Our kids are watching us far more closely than they are listening to us. We can say, “good job” or “thanks for doing that” until we’re blue in the face. But they internalize more from what we do.
