Breaking a glass is the most dramatic of minor household inconveniences.
Often, you realize what’s coming a moment too late. The object sails through space in slow motion, toward the inevitable point of impact. Maybe you’re paralyzed by shock or simply too slow to act. Whatever the reason for the accident, rushing, trying to get dinner on the table, playing indoors, a pet’s curiosity, a freak act of nature, the result is the same:
CRASH.
“NO ONE COME IN HERE,” you shout to your household before cursing under your breath and calculating how much time the clean-up effort will take. You berate yourself, If only I hadn’t been so careless... If I’d taken an extra second to think about what I was doing… Had I tried to lift less or moved slower or wiped up the water on the kitchen counter that proved too slippery…
If you’re lucky, it’s a clean break. A few big pieces in a contained area that you can pick up with your hands. If you’re unlucky, you’ll keep finding microscopic shards in every corner after multiple rounds of vacuuming. The tiny pieces mock you by catching the light after you thought you’d gotten the last of it. Out of paranoia, you wear slippers the rest of the day until time makes the tile floors safe again.
I broke a glass on Tuesday.
A stemless wineglass encompassed by swirling shades of pink. It was given to me the day I entrusted my cat to her new adoptive parents. Cookie, as we named her, was a malnourished calico living in the dusty backyard behind my college house. I kidnapped her, vaccinated her, and introduced her to a life indoors. She was slow to trust, unfriendly, and hated being picked up. As much as I loved her, I knew she’d never be able to endure a six-hour flight to New York.
When the time came to place her in a carrier for her new parents, she fought like her life depended on it. Biting, scratching, hissing, hiding. My room was turned upside down by the ordeal. It took two of us and half an hour to trap her. Once Cookie was inside her carrier, she let out a little helpless meow, and I burst into tears.
This past Tuesday, I was washing dishes and watching a forgettable Christmas movie when my wineglass broke. I saw it slide out of my soapy dish glove and futilely tried to catch it. I can’t tell you whether my tight grip or impact with the countertop did it in. It all happened so fast. Either way, it shattered.
I cursed. Cursed myself and the world and my new cat, Magnum, for immediately coming over and stepping all over the hazardous area.
“WHY?!” I shouted at the cat, the world, and God like a modern-day Job.1 Why must my afternoon be upended by such an inconvenience? Why must I now get out the vacuum and the slippers and clear the area when I could have just as easily gone about my day, unbothered?
This wasn’t the first glass I’ve broken this year. Or the second. Or the third. In March, my Caroline’s pint glass spontaneously broke at its base while I was using it to hold flowers. Murky water ran all over my wooden chest of drawers, as I mopped it up, too slow to avoid a stain. I mourned that glass for days. Caroline’s Comedy Club is closed now so there’ll never be another one. Never another Times Square New Year’s Eve party snuck into with fake IDs. Never another night of running up the service stairwell to watch the ball drop, hiding stolen pint glasses under paper New Year’s hats.
Why that glass survived two trips between New York and Los Angeles, to spontaneously combust, I’ll never know. I wonder if it reached the end of its natural life. Do our possessions have a lifecycle? I like to think so.
I’ve always adored items with history, be it mine or someone else’s. A Peter Max print owned by three different people in my family or a copy of A Man for All Seasons with names of 70s rock bands printed in the front by a bored high school student.
These objects thrill and comfort me, yet their permanence is a myth. Vinyl gets scratched, books fall in the bathtub, sweaters snag, jewelry is lost, jeans rip, and of course, glasses shatter.
Sophia, it’s just a glass. You’re right. It means nothing, really. It’s just a thing. A thing that used to be in my kitchen and no longer is.
I sat having tea with a friend this afternoon – an eighty-eight-year-old friend, dealing with major life changes and threats to her independence since her body stopped working the way she wants it to. This may sound morbid, she began, but I wonder what will happen to all this stuff… She gestured to the glasses, dishware, and ceramics that line the shelves of her dining room. She has an incredible collection. I offered some comments about her grandchildren being interested in inheriting them, but in truth, I didn’t have an answer. I was looking at a life-long collection, too much for any one person to take over. It reminded me of the old, familiar adage you can’t take it with you. Something easy to forget at age twenty-three.
Two hours later, I watched a lecture titled “The History of New York in Twenty Objects.”2 The lecturer, Sam Roberts, embraced the personification of items, stating his goal was to give each object he spoke of a life of its own. I sat in awe listening to him discuss the oldest manmade structure of New York’s cityscape: Cleopatra’s Needle. The Egyptian obelisk is 3,500 years old. It’s one of New York’s many treasures I take for granted. How many histories does that structure hold? I have my own stories attached to it. My life could be recounted in yellow cabs, hot dog stands, the Pepsi-Cola sign across the East River, and a million other New York objects. I wonder if, without those things, my history – my sense of self – would become diluted. Without physical touchstones and personal treasures, how would I remember who I am? I ask this knowing, that compared with health and happiness, material possessions aren’t very important at all.
Everything in my apartment, even what I cherish most, would be sent off to Goodwill or a dumpster if I ceased to exist tomorrow. That’s okay. Maybe a few items would be kept by my friends and family as a way to remember me. The History of Sophia Mazzella in Twenty Objects! I’m certain no one would have kept that stemless pink wineglass.
Yet, when I broke the glass, I cried.
I cried over the loss of something that felt irreplaceable even though my logical side knew it wasn’t important. I cried over the fact that no one was going to jump out of the closet with the dustpan to clean up my mess. I suddenly felt so utterly alone.
After I composed myself, I began the ritual clean-up. Big shards into the trash. Small bits into the vacuum. The vacuum’s contents into the trash. The garbage bag into a bin outside my building. All done. As if it never happened. But I was still alone in my cluttered apartment. Inexplicably more so than I’d been before the break.
So, I placed a call. The heaviness in my body couldn’t be thrown in the trash bins in front of the building, but with someone to talk to, I could bear it. It’s a far more complex process to repair oneself after falling apart. You must put the pieces back together whether it’s a clean break or not. The pieces are all you have.
If you’ve been reading my work for a while, you’ll know I’m a writer that likes to assign meaning to a molehill. I believe this alternatively makes my writing good and schmaltzy3 depending on the day. I won’t make the obvious metaphor about a broken glass and a broken spirit any more than I already have. It’s not the idea I’m most interested in. What makes a broken glass so dramatic in the first place? You’d think an inconvenience is an inconvenience, but something about damaging glass, in my experience, hurts more than a clogged shower drain or a chipped dinner plate.
Why does it have the power to bring the world to a crashing halt?
I can’t say. I only know that it does.
Outfit of This Era:
Recommendations for This Era:
Dolly Parton’s new album, Rockstar
Aside from the Covid vaccine, I think this is Dolly’s best project in recent memory. I often think about Jimmy Webb’s quote on hearing Johnny Cash sing the last verse of “Highwayman,” a song Webb wrote. He said, “I don’t know how they decided who would take which verse, but having Johnny last was like having God singing your song.” I’m no songwriter, but I believe Dolly’s rendition of “What’s Up?” by 4 Non Blondes evokes a similar power.
Priscilla (2023) directed by Sofia Coppola
Molly Fischer’s article “Sympathy for the School Girl” on Priscilla and the ‘School Girl’ archetype in popular culture.
Ice Skating
Lily’s Victorian Establishment
They’ve outdone themselves with Christmas Decorations.
Cafe Anne’s article “Life Advice from NYC Chess Hustlers”
This is my favorite thing I’ve read on Substack.
Scarves
The off-Broadway production Little Shop of Horrors.4
“The Book of Job” is a book of the Old Testament devoted to the question of why God allows bad things to happen to good people, also known as Theodicy. In the story, Satan makes a bet with God that Job, a model, pious citizen, will lose his faith if his fortune takes a turn. After Job loses his family and material wealth, he asks God why, only to be reminded of his own lack of knowledge. “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” God asks. Job repents, embracing total faith in God, despite not understanding his ways.
If this topic interests you, Sam Roberts has written a book on the topic called “The History of New York in 101 Objects.”
As Nora Ephron would put it.
It’s been running so long, there’s no excuse not to go.