The handle used to flush the toilet broke. Just fell right off tinkling on the floor like happy little bells. The fact that we had just replaced most of the inner workings of the toilet only to have this break now was not amusing.
I just stood there staring at the little piece of the handle where it lay on the floor. It was one of those moments when so much has gone wrong already that another problem doesn’t even garner a reaction.
Finally I stooped down and picked the bit up and fiddled with it a bit until it was reattached. It wasn’t fixed. It was patched.
A week or so went by with various incidents of the handle falling off before I could get to the store to get a replacemt part. Almost everyone we know has been a victim of the handle falling off in that short space of time.
Then finally I got the piece to fix it. I had no idea what I was doing, but the package said “easy to install”.
They were right. A few seconds was all it took to unscrew the old piece and slide out the broken bit and slip the new one in and tighten it.
I fixed it. I felt powerful.
It wasn’t the difficulty of the repair that made me feel so empowered. It was the fact that I did it. I fixed something that was wrong. So many things have been going wrong and everything seems to be out of my control. But finally I had some control over something.
Sometimes it is the littlest thing that makes the most difference.
adriana pridemore 