Falling apart

That mailbox? The one attached to the post via electrical tape?

That's my mailbox.

This long, cold, snowy winter sucker punched it. Seems a snow plow took it out while scraping our road. The mail carrier was kind enough to hand deliver our mail to the front door and inform us of the assault. My husband fished the battered box out of a snowy ditch.

It was cold. It was icy. Hand delivery of our bills, my Entertainment Weekly and the occasional American Girl catalog was a one-time thing (side note: no one - no one - in this house is in the market for American Girl dolls and yet we have received that catalog for more than 10 years, despite repeated unsubscribes).

So hubs did what any middle class, educated man would do in front of his suburban home: he got a roll of tape and stuck that dented beast back on the post with a promise to fix it in the spring thaw.

It's not embarrassing at all.

[it's possible I am lying]

This?

Now this embarrassed me.

You see, our 15-year-old washer would thump and jiggle like a tiny nightclub each time the load was unbalanced - which was every. single. time. we ran it. Eventually, the thumping shook the front panel loose, adding a percussive element as it moved away from its set placement, much a like Stevie Nicks twirling on stage with a tambourine.

Hubs would balance the feet, tighten the panel ... until the next load. Eventually, it would rattle and shake into a boot scooting line dance of sorts.

Then one day, it made like a stripper on dollar beer night and dropped the front panel completely.

You might say, "Who cares? It's just the laundry room. You're the only ones who will see it."

Naturally, this happened the week we had a guest who needed to use our laundry facilities. Our dirty shame (literally dirty - the inside of a 15-year-old washer is nasty) was not hidden; it had a witness. And I was embarrassed by it.

My husband is a handy guy. He can fix stuff. He's good at it and I am not going to lie: I dig this quality in a man. It's downright sexy. He fought this machine for more than a week and let me tell you: there was some unusually foul language flying about from my normally sweet, polite guy. I thought it might best him. I had duct tape anxiety, knowing he might choose to tape it shut or worse yet, just leave it open. Buying a new washer is not an option financially.

But he conquered it. Tape free. Our shame concealed ... at least until the next unbalanced load.

Life is like that. Sometimes it seems our world is falling apart physically, mentally, spiritually, literally. We get knocked down, rattled loose. We swear, we fight to keep it together, to hold on and stay useful. We peel back the layers of fear, anxiety, embarrassment. Sometimes we conquer it, and sometimes we need to patch ourselves together a little while longer and hope for a better day; a better way.

"Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try one more time." - Thomas Edison