that's mrs. mediocrity to you

It’s been a month of things being broken. I hear Mercury’s to blame, and smile at the notion, but then I believe it anyway, because it’s been a month of things being broken.

Some things get fixed and other things get replaced and still other things get discarded.

Clearing the air and the space and the clutter that looms in my mind. I want to fix everything, I can’t fix anything, no, I can fix this.

Somehow, I inherited the fix-it gene. And with it, the particular strain of stubbornness required to make it work, whatever it is that I’m fixing. Both a bane and a blessing, I suppose.

But I like fixing things better than discarding. We throw away so much these days, without thinking, without taking in the bigger implications of where it all goes. Some days, I want to stop buying anything. Tiny bottles of cream in boxes four times their size. Two grocery items in one shopping bag. Cardboard and cardboard and cardboard. Recycling bins overflowing.

There are too many things that can’t be fixed, things that are intended to be discarded as soon as they stop working.

Some days, I feel this notion is filtering over into our humanity. I see so many quips about discarding people who have hurt you or don’t encourage you or don’t do this or that, and it makes me wonder. We used to fix our relationships along with our toasters. Have we abandoned that practice, as well?

We have so many choices, too many choices, and that becomes its own kind of stuck.

I cant find a decent charcoal grill at a decent price to replace the three we’ve had since this one that my husband took to our camp. The models they sell now are so visibly cheap that they might last a year if you’re lucky. And everyone uses gas grills these days, because it’s faster, and perhaps, a little, because it’s cleaner. I try to talk my husband into gas, but he’s old school, he likes the process of starting the briquets and waiting for the right temperature. I think how much easier a gas grill would be, but I’m not the griller, so charcoal it is. Besides, I suppose a gas grill would be just one more thing that would break.

It’s been a month of things being broken.

But even so, my garden is lush, we have food on our table, and people we love, and blue skies at least half the time. It’s summer and the glass is half full. Another year, pouring itself out for the taking.

I drink to you, June.

Now come on over here and sit next to me while I fix the torn hem of your dress.

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