Justin and I are consistently amazed at just how many things in our lives are broken, destroyed, or ruined by our children. It’s not like our children are animals or anything. They’re just kids, with messy hands, dirty shoes, and often misaimed throws. They sometimes lack common sense – and the ability to use their amazing brains – and things get dirty and wrecked quite often as a result. Frequently, in the aftermath of some act of destruction, we look at each other questioningly, followed by a statement that has become somewhat of a Gagnon family mantra: “And THIS is why we can’t have nice things.”
It happens ALL the time. Just last year we did some remodeling in our house, and repainted the entire downstairs. You really wouldn’t know it by looking now – we’ve got handprints all over the walls, and the residue from some lovely sticky hands framing our doorway. SO many little reminders that, no matter how vigilant we are, our “things” are subject to our children marking their territory in some way.
I never really thought this applied to me, but an incident over Christmas break proved that even I contribute to our inability to have nice things.
You see, Justin had just purchased a new car three days earlier. Literally, he had driven the car something like 22 miles in the three days since he had bought it. And it wasn’t just that he had bought a new car – he had driven his prior, well-loved and well-worn 2003 Honda Accord for 13 years before this. For the last couple years, as his car aged and the reality of a family of 6 with a 5-seat sedan as a backup set in, he had daydreamed about his next vehicle and over-researched and over-analyzed like he does so often and so well. So, when he finally brought this new puppy of a car home, his excitement was overdue to say the least.
I decided that it was a great day to clean out our garage. I like to do this sort of thing when I feel overwhelmed by clutter, and the garage had certainly become almost unaccessible thoroughfare during the Christmas season madness, cluttered with Amazon boxes, strewn bikes and scooters, wrapping paper debris, and the ever-challenging ball landmines. Justin was game to help, so I capitalized on having his partnership while the kids rode their bikes in our cul-de-sac. We pulled everything out of our garage onto our driveway so that we could organize, and then sorted through things to put back in.
In the process of organizing the debris in the driveway, I was moving a tupperware storage bin back into the garage and, in a slow-motion-chain-of-events kinda way, happened to ever-so-slightly tap one of our bikes, which was standing up in the driveway. The bike came crashing down, with the handle bar (which had of course ripped through the rubber with the metal tube exposed) gashing the driver’s side door of Justin’s 3-day-old car. HIS BRAND NEW CAR.
Justin almost lost it, but composed himself and muttered something like, “I just need some time…” and wandered away, after inspecting the dent and paint chip on the side of his new purchase. I had an instant stomachache that stayed with me all afternoon. When he finally came back into the garage, I burst into tears as soon as we made eye contact, apologizing over and over. He walked over, wrapped his arms around me, and after 15 seconds of comforting me, whispered in my ear the mantra that we’ve spoken to our children countless times: “See…this is why we can’t have nice things.”
Maybe it’s just this stage of life, or maybe our family’s more clumsy or a little more careless than your average bunch. Or maybe our family mantra is just our perma-way-of-life. Only time will tell. If this does end up being some sort of genetic deficiency that we’ve passed on to our children that’s determined to remain in our bloodlines, my hope is that they find a partner who can laugh it off with them, and always keep them focused on what’s truly important.
