Broken

No, that's not an abstract painting Tiff and I are working on. That's the mess of solder that came out of the stained glass piece we posted a picture of in a previous post. Yeah not even a day after we soldered it up and it was so pretty and perfect......I broke it. Technically I didn't break it, the wind/mother nature broke it. It was propped up on our window sill in the office for us to admire, and we had some really beautiful weather recently, so I decided to open the windows. Now in my defense I had opened the window the piece was leaning on previously without incident, but this time it was quite windy outside and within 15 seconds of opening the window (about the exact time it took me to walk from the window back to my desk) a huge gust blew it over. Luckily the windows are right next to Tiff's desk and she (with her cat like reflexes) grabbed it before it could smash on the floor. In the process of her grabbing it a piece of glass still broke though. So I'm in the process of laboriously pulling all the solder out of the joints surrounding the broken piece and then cleaning it up, cutting a new piece and re-soldering. Needless to say its taking much longer to fix the piece than it did to make it the first time.

This incident did remind me of a very important feeling/lesson I haven't thought of since I was in a car accident several years ago. In the moments immediately following the sound of broken glass I felt such regret it was almost palpable. If only I could rewind the past 15 seconds of my life, go back to the split second when I decided not to move the glass from the window. Such small, quick decisions can have very real devistating consequences.