Cycle-Breakers

Tonight I decided to make a somewhat nicer meal for a weeknight including a pork loin. Everything else was almost ready; mashed potatoes were creamy and dreamily resting on the back of the stove, kept warm by the hot oven, corn on the cob simmering away in a huge pot of boiling water, and crescent rolls on a baking sheet patiently waiting to enter the oven once the pork had come out. I moved the sheet of crescents off the trivets and placed them on another counter. I opened the oven, blasted by a wave a heat. Using my blue silicone oven mitts, I took the pork loin out of the oven and placed it on the trivets that just held the cold crescents.

In an instant, cracking and crashing sounds filled the air as hot shards of glass flew across my kitchen in all directions. Later I supposed the hot glass baking dish touching the cooled trivets was just too much of a temperature difference causing the glass to shatter. Luckily, my son was outside playing with the dog and my daughter was still at honor band rehearsal.

My husband helped me clean up all the large pieces of glass and then took our son to pick up our daughter from rehearsal. As I stayed at home to finish dinner and keep cleaning to make sure every last sliver and glitter of glass was gone, I couldn't help but think of this 🔗 childhood memory.

What a difference a couple of decades makes. In my home tonight there was no yelling, no violence. No running and dodging to escape. My husband came home with the kids and we ate a hot home-cooked meal talking over our day like always.

I still feel triggered and shaken by the similarities of these two stories. I know my parents did the best they could with what they had. My husband and I aren't perfect. We are finding our way and making our own mistakes. But tonight was a reminder that we are doing the best we can with what we have and maybe, just maybe, not causing the same trauma to our kids. Maybe we are cycle-breakers.

Comments

  1. You wrote in such a way, I could actually picture you and your husband bent down, collecting the shattered glass. I appreciated how you circled this blog back to a post you wrote a year ago. That piece about the baked barbecue chicken still haunts me. Cycle breaking ain't easy my friend. You are doing an amazing job raising good humans. I'm deeply impressed you were able to hold your shit together when the pork loin dish spazzed out.

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