Every Passover, I spend the holiday dinner, or seder, with friends. We talk about the Jews’ Exodus from Egypt, and how that story applies to today. This year, one of the topics we discussed was, “How do you feel broken right now?” It was supposed to be a reflection on current affairs.
That is not how I took the question.
My initial reaction was, what do you mean right now?
Since that first major illness, I have always felt broken and, at least physically, I was. Sometimes emotionally, too. In fact, when the little kids in my life started asking about my insulin pump, and I had to figure out how to help a 4- or 5-year-old understand, I would tell them my body is broken and the machine helps it work again. They understood that.
When the others at our dinner talked about feeling broken, it was accompanied with a weighty emotional burden. Less so for me. Broken is part of my normal. For a while, it seemed like my body broke a little more at a fairly alarming rate, and it was just one more thing to adapt to. Once the first thing breaks, the second, third, and tenth are less of a big deal.
But broken is a loaded word. It implies nonfunction. Of course, that can be true immediately after each diagnosis. But eventually, it evolves into different function. My body, broken as it is, gets both mechanical and chemical help, and it functions the best way it can. The way my (insert organ here) works may not look like how everybody else’s, but it does the job.
It’s worth saying that I know my body does a great job compensating. Even I can only tell sometimes that the left side of my body doesn’t work as well as my right side. And the nerves in my feet that are affected by peripheral neuropathy have regenerated and are almost completely healed. Almost. Silver lining to developing complications of diabetes so young, I guess?
When I was little, I had this porcelain figurine. September Mouse. She was reading a book and had a flower in her nonexistent hair. For some reason, I kept her in the bathroom. The number of times I knocked her into the sink and broke an ear – I think it was always the same ear – should have prompted my parents to buy stock in the glue company. But I couldn’t bear to throw September Mouse away, so they glued it back together every time. She never looked like new, but she was still her.
Kind of like me.
The Japanese have an art form called Kintsugi. They take broken things and repair them with a special lacquer mixed with gold, silver, or platinum. The breakage stands out and becomes the art. It’s a beautiful philosophy, that the broken can be even more beautiful than the whole, or at least just as beautiful, even if it doesn’t function the same way. The cup or vase or bowl won’t hold water anymore, but it can be a decoration, and bring joy in a different way.
That’s how I see myself, broken but not less than. It’s either that or the Island of Misfit Toys. I prefer to be art.