Lessons learned in repairing broken things

“Hey Mom, can you fix this?” My son held up the bits of what was once a ceramic bowl. It had been hand-thrown and beautifully glazed by a local artist. The brokenness he held in his hands spoke to the intersections of his life: a man who admires and cherishes lovely things; the realities of being a father to five children.

I’m a person who can fix things, a quality my family knows well. I would rather fix than discard something, and my projects have ranged from reattaching an action figure’s arm (there’s a rubber band inside) to replacing the foam surrounds on a pair of iconic 1970 JBL L100 floor speakers.

Every sort of household appliance has succumbed to my attention, but I am especially proud of replacing the radiator in our aging minivan when the kids were young and money was tight. 

In all these things I have learned some lessons, which I am happy to share here, if you care to stay with me.

Lesson One: Some things that break are not so easy to fix. 

Sometimes it’s better to count the loss and begin anew. When something breaks, it is often not worth the effort or expense of repairing. We salvage and recycle what we can. 

But if something is necessary or useful, we might attempt to repair it. Our choice of repair over replacement is determined by various factors, perhaps economic, perhaps environmental, or even sentimental. For me, especially as a young mom, it was often all three at once.

So what to do with this broken bowl? When a ceramic vessel is stressed to the point of breaking, it flexes before the fire-created atomic bonds holding the clay together break. Because these bonds break while under pressure, the pieces won’t fit together perfectly. This bowl is not an easy repair.

Lesson Two: The broken thing is never the same as before.

A thing that is broken and brought back to wholeness is not identical to what it was. It’s not really “as good as new.” (As anyone who has suffered the loss of vehicle value to a car accident can attest). At best, it’s a restoration.

In the process of undergoing repair or restoration, the thing has changed. The way that it interacts with or reveals itself to the world is different. This may not be apparent to those only tangentially acquainted to the thing or the process, but it is apparent to those who are attentive or privy to the right information.

Lesson Three: The most difficult things to repair are not things at all.

When I took the broken bowl into my hands, it was not out of obligation. It was for love. A woman with a 34 year-old son with children of his own has held a lot of brokenness in her hands. A lifetime of relationships across time and space, each one marked with pleasure and pain, joys and griefs. My son and I have shared these aspects of life as well.

The most difficult breaks we can experience are within our relationships with one another. Difficult because they are painful, and seem to call into question our meaning or value. Difficult also because the breaking is often hidden from others, and we feel so very alone.

When we find ourselves in a relationship at the breaking point, it can be hard to imagine the sort of healing that not only repairs the break, but brings us to a new beginning. It may seem easier to get it over with. But the value proposition offered in the possibility of  repair and restoration holds some attraction; it expresses a tendency of us humans toward hopefulness and wholeness.

Lesson Four: Metaphors help us to understand the human condition.

I wonder if this is why the Japanese developed the art of kintsugi, where an artisan glues broken pottery back together, highlighting the mended uneven seams with a gold adhesive. The vessel is no longer the same, nor will it likely serve the exact same function. It has entered into a new state of being, one that speaks to beauty from brokenness. 

The golden scars reveal the value that is placed on that object; it displays the care and artisanship that was required to mend it. And the precious gold not only reveals its spiritual or sentimental value, it affirms its material value as well. In its changing, it has transitioned to a different state of being.

For healing to occur in our relationships, we need to change as well. In the process of transition we often discover that the relationship was never whole in the first place. One (or more likely both) of us have carried our own brokenness into the bond, with relational stress creating fissures that turn to fractures, and an eventual dismembering of what it was that once held the two of us together. 

We too, have scars.

Lesson Six: Repairs require vulnerability.

Traditional Japanese kintsugi artisans use lacquer as their bonding agent. Today it is common to use epoxy, especially for those new to the craft. Both are potential allergens. I learned a few years ago that I am highly allergic to epoxy, when contact to my hands ended in a systemic reaction across my whole body.  

As I sat down to work on the bowl repair, I hesitated briefly, before going to the workshop for a pair of nitrile gloves. I knew that what I was about to undertake required a willingness for potential harm. I wondered if I should hold my breath.

To be vulnerable is to be exposed to the possibility of injury. Our relational woundedness demonstrates how our openness to being with one another has opened us to harm as well. Yet with care and intention, we might find ourselves opening toward healing. Embracing vulnerability exposes a deep willingness to remember what was, and imagine what might be.  

There is honesty in this; an admission that the relationship will never be the same. If the coming together of the pieces is to be restored from brokenness– to be “re-membered”– so to speak, then we have some work ahead of us. We need to not only encounter who we used to be in the past, but kindly admit to who we are in the present, and use our capacity of imagination to project who we might be in the future, together again. 

In all of this, there is the possibility of further injury.

We need to breathe.

Lesson Seven: Repairs require devotion, attention, and time.

Once I was committed to repairing my son’s bowl (it had sat in my house broken for weeks), I set about gathering the materials I needed. A few tubes of epoxy; golden mica powder (sorry son, no 24-carat gold dust for you), and very thin brushes that would serve as sacrificial tools destined for the waste bin. The job was accomplished over a few (not consecutive) Saturdays.

The first stage was a dry fit, that is, seeing where each break was, how the pieces fit together, and the best order in which to progress.

Then was the actual joining of the pieces, with careful application of adhesive, and taping each piece to the others to hold everything in place. The whole thing was turned upside down with a pile of books on top.

And then time, time for the catalyst to bond, time to cure.

I knew the application of the golden epoxy to seal the mended cracks would take special attention, so I waited for a day that I could lay aside my other cares and focus on this delicate task. 

Craft epoxy comes in an applicator that squirts out two separate resins, one of which serves as a catalyst. Once mixed, it immediately begins to undergo a chemical reaction and is unworkable after five minutes.

After adding the mica powder and mixing, I had to work quickly, because painting with epoxy allows for only a minute before it is unworkable. Yet the cracks that needed to be filled were sometimes long and sometimes intricate, each one requiring care and a steady hand. After mixing multiple batches of the gooey golden stuff and sacrificing only two brushes, I sat the transformed bowl aside to cure.

In returning the bowl, my son and his family were delighted. Particularly so my granddaughter, who immediately exclaimed, “It’s gold!”

Many have written of kintsugi and its relationship to brokenness and beauty. In undertaking the repair and healing of a friendship, a parent-child bond, a partnership, a marriage, beauty is key. Beauty is found in the integrity of the human heart, in selflessness for the sake of shared goals, in the willingness to remember, the daring to imagine, and the beginning again. 

Lessons Eight: Some things can’t be fixed. 

As mentioned at the outset, some things cannot be repaired. It takes honesty and wisdom to know when to move forward and when to separate. Even in the separation, there are still remaining bonds and connections that might need attending, at least at the level of civility. Care, devotion, and attention is required here as well.

The leaving is not an admission of fault or failure, but that the separation can make for new beginnings also. These are difficult revelations. As many have found, “we are better apart than we are together.”

Regardless, together or apart, we will never be the same as before. In every instance we have changed, as individuals and as a pair; as parent; as a family; as a friend; as a community. We may find our becoming more beautiful than imagined.

It may be tempting to skip the lessons, but if we do, we lose the possibility of discovering the beauty that arises from the brokenness.

Image: The author’s first attempt at the craft of kintsugi. © Yvonne Wilber