When I was 6 years old, I broke one of my mother’s favorite teacups. It wasn’t a big break. The main tea chamber remained whole and unbroken, though the cup’s thin curly handle had broken free, so to speak, and refused to ever hold up the cup again. 

Refused, that is, until my mother took the breakaway handle and deftly applied a tear of glue to each of its uneven ends.

Quickly fitting the errant handle back into place, she smiled and said, “There!” with that special smile of hers. 

“No reason to cry,” she added softly, holding up the resurrected cup for my inspection. “Now, dry your tears.”

Which is exactly what I did.

When I was 12 years old, I broke my bicycle, thick fabric from my pants leg accidentally getting chewed up in the bicycle’s chain.

“It wasn’t your fault,” My mom said soothingly to once again quell my tears. 

It took mom two hours with scissors and sewing sheers to free the chewed up corduroy fabric from the jammed bicycle chain. Thus, rescuing both my frazzled emotions and, most happily, my broken bike. 

True to form, Mom smiled softly and told me to dry my tears

In looking back, I see there were two items in my mother’s repair kit she repeatedly applied to whatever broken items she faced in her life. 

Love, of course, was the first of these two essentials. Love sent out in all directions. Not only towards her son whose brokenness was directly tied to the injuries suffered by cup and bike, but also the love in which she held her world and all within it. The same love that made her stand up for those women rejected by others in her retirement community. A love that caused her to be the best Mom she could be, also the best friend and the best human being. Talk to my cousins, Mom was the aunt they remember with the most affection. Same with my friends.

A world filled with my Mother’s love was a world always on the mend.

The second critical ingredient in Mom’s repair kit was time. Time for my Mother’s love to take effect. Time for the glue to harden. Time to snip away and release all the trapped fragments of corduroy. Time for her son’s pain to fall into distant memory, as wounds always will. If you give them enough time.

Today, I search for meaning and direction in the turns my country has recently taken; turns that make no sense to me.  Worse, they frighten me and clearly indicate a tear in the fabric of our wholeness. 

My big question is what can we do to mend the breach? And do it in a way that prevents further damage? 

In simplest terms, we need to heal the wound as we repair the break, just like my Mother once did for me.

For me, the answer lies in doing what I love, which is writing. And while earlier I felt obligated to sound a warning, to write about the coming dangers and tragic consequences we faced if Trump won the election.  

Now I feel compelled to let others fight the fights we clearly see coming, and to consciously bring light, joy and love to anyone who chooses to read what I have to share.

Which brings me back to my Mother, a wonderful human being who made her world a better place, and to offer you her two essential ingredients to help you recover as I will. 

With Love and Time. 

Whatever you do, whether you’re a writer, butcher, waitress, train conductor, chef or teacher, do it with love. And let your love inspire others. You see where this is going? 

Let’s combine our energies to create so much love there won’t be room for anything that makes us sad, lessened, frightened or unhappy.

Yes, I agree. It sounds like a third-grader’s recipe for fixing the world. Brightly colored band-aids of love and good feelings. Pasted everywhere, up and down this crazy country of ours.

And so I dedicate myself through my writing to add smiles, laughs and as much enjoyment as can be crammed into a two or three page blog essay. Like this one.

There! 

Now dry your tears.