The Japanese has a pottery mending technique called Kintsugi. I learned about it years ago while listening to NPR. Essentially, broken pottery is mended by filling in the cracks with a lacquer mixed with powdered gold.

The breaks, cracks, and scars are highlighted into a work of beauty. That which would be deemed as ugly is lovely and valued.

I broke on Tuesday. The mounting grief. The weariness of finishing the first school quarter. The navigation through the grief labyrinth exhausted me. I’m trying to find normalcy.

I was determined to work all week. It would be my first round of working two full weeks. I would be fine. Back to a semblance of normalcy. I still grieve my brother. But grief wouldn’t be haunting my garden. She’d be on hiatus.

Yesterday, I woke up and stayed wrapped in my blankets. Warmth pulsated through my body. And the pillow cushioned my head so well the weariness pulled me deeper into my mattress. It was 5:30. I had a thirty minute window to call in sick. And the idea of being home. Of sleeping in or just laying in bed past 5:35 felt wonderful.

Tuesday, I broke. The grief and the stress and the weariness broke me. I was walking to the cafeteria for my lunch duty when the head of the counseling department greeted me. I smiled. Tried to speak. But the pain cemented my throat.

He asked me how I was doing. His voice was easy, jovial. I gave him a thumbs up. Tried to smile more enthusiastically. He asked me if I was okay. I gave him a bigger thumbs up. A watery smile.

I don’t remember much more because he asked something or said something and I think I started staring at the ceiling to focus away the tears and to pretend that I was fine. And then he invited me into his office and I followed him and sat in a chair and tears streamed down my face.

I am trying so hard. Trying to do and to be and to live and to exist within the parameters of my work and my family and the expectations that encircle me. And I have been told recently by many people whom I respect that my expectations are way too high.

Like beyond anything I could possibly or humanly imagine. I keep shifting my responsibilities around so I could take on more so I can be busy and be of worth and make people happy and….

The coordinating conjunction can be completed and filled with so many nouns and verbs, all of which are feeling exhausting.

I woke up Thursday, feeling the cracks. Feeling the fractures and the shifting tectonic plates that are drifting away from each other. I could feel my foundation ebbing. And I went through my mental lesson plans and felt that I needed to be at school. I was needed. Or I thought I was needed. Or I expected to be needed. Or I needed to be needed.

I needed to breathe. I needed to stop expecting so much of myself and then yanking the measuring stick well over my head. I needed to collect my fragments and clasp them in my calloused palms that are more blistered than calloused.

By second period, I smacked into my emotional wall and didn’t bounce back. I broke even more. I arrived to my classroom and my collaborative partner took one look at me and said, “You look like a deer in headlights.”

The first Thursday, I had told her that the grief was so bad, I felt like a deer in headlights. Blinded. Unable to move. Trapped and caged and terrified.

So yesterday, I did my best. And I put in for a sick day so I could stay home and write letters of recommendation and get work done because I am struggling with concentrating. And I didn’t meet my goal of working two full weeks.

And I didn’t meet my goal or fulfill my expectation of writing all of my letters of recommendation. Because I struggled with getting out of bed this morning and then I struggled with focusing and then I struggled with not crying and I struggled because I felt so broken.

I stared at my computer and my lesson plans book and my dogs. And then I went upstairs and changed into warmer clothing. I filled a backpack with journals and colored pencils and snacks. I grabbed the dogs’ beds and leashes. And I laid the beds in the back of my car and settled in the dogs and turned west and drove to the mountains.

And I wept. I wept because I ache so much. I wept because I am exhausted. I wept because I miss my brother. I miss my brother. I miss my brother so very much.

And I miss the nuances of my old life that I’m trying to mend and recognize as the new life that I will live for the rest of my life.

But I drove to Shenandoah National Park and breathed through the quiet roadway flanked by autumnal cathedral arches. I stared at and admired and loved the dusty light yellows, the scarlet reds, the dusky browns. The summer flowers were brittle and the milkweed pods burst open as they poured out their constellations of seeds.

I sat in the back of the car with the dogs and ate my lunch, sharing my fries with them. We strolled through Big Meadows and I sat on a cool patch of ground and watched the clouds throw shadows across the meadows, mountains, and valley. And I felt the mending. Not healing.

But a suturing of my cracks and broken edges.

I sat in a meadow surrounded by blue mountains and stiff brown grass and a divine blue sky. And I felt the tectonic plates realign.

The cracks fill with gold.

I am striving for the peace of Timshel. Of the forgiveness that I will never fully meet or exceed all of expectations because I too frequently create and then build infeasible expectations.

I will never be perfect.

But the fold of my mistakes shows how I strive to be good.