A Broken Dish

It dawned on me as I walked Allie home from school. I thought about the large blue Pyrex baking dish falling to the tile floor of the kitchen earlier that morning, and the shards of glass spread all the way to the dining room...

I stopped and thought about that.

After we came home from walking Allie to school that morning, I sat Drew down in his booster seat to give him breakfast. Sami stood next to him, cooing and making faces. I walked three feet to the counter by the sink, where Drew's tray stood sandwiched in the middle of clean dishes from the previous night's dinner. I tilted the baking dish back. Somehow it slipped out from my hand. I tried to grab it, but missed. My body tensed, and I scrunched my eyes closed and turned away, bracing myself for the inevitable. I heard the dish bounce once, and then shatter. Then I turned back around.

Sami and Drew were frozen, staring at the glass on the ground. The glass was spread from right where the dish hit the floor all the way to the carpet in the dining room, about ten to twelve feet away. Tiny shards lay around my bare feet. Sami still had her shoes on from our walk, so I had her grab some shoes for me, so I could clean up the mess. Sami and Drew ate breakfast while I swept, Swiffered (three times), and vacuumed for forty-five minutes.

What a pain! I was so irritated. I was mad at Kevin for setting up the dishes in such a "careless" way, mad at me for not being more careful, mad at Sami for telling me over and over and over again that I shouldn't drop glass...

So I was even more shocked to realize as I walked Allie home from school that I had truly experienced a miracle.

The image of the glass on the floor came back to my mind. Massive, sharp shards had been blown ten feet, and yet my children and I, who had been standing within three feet of the accident, remained untouched. Not a single large piece of jagged glass had been shot in our direction-- in fact, I had only found several tiny shards on our side of the kitchen. The glass had blown in every direction but ours.

Some might say that's just a fluke-- just dumb luck. Some science-worshiping physicist might give some explanation as to why that happened-- how the glass falling and hitting in a certain way caused the glass to shatter in a certain direction. I'd listen and agree... and then remind him or her about Who invented physics.