Cracked Up

Have you ever done something really bad? Something that made you feel so horrible that you couldn’t speak to even apologize? My first experience of this gut wrenching misery happened in 2000. This horrible act stayed with me for a long time.
Every year my mother’s side of the family goes on what we cleverly named ‘Family Vacation’. One day in particular my cousin Hannah and I were lying out by the pool. It was particularly hot and we wanted shade. We had seen Brent grab an umbrella out from the middle of a glass table by himself the other day. We decided that it couldn’t be that heavy and started to lift the umbrella out. It got top heavy, started tipping and cracked the table.
I ran to tell my mother and felt horrible. The idea had been all Hannah’s and she is older so I went along with it. My mom put us in our room and got my Grandmother who paid for the whole vacation. We had to tell her that we cracked the table and she had lost her security deposit.
I felt so guilty that I couldn’t stop crying and my mother encouraged it. She said I should have thought before I’d acted and that now I would have to work and pay back my grandma. My cousin on the other hand felt fine and her mother said she would pay for Hannah’s half for her.
This event instilled an easily brought up sense of embarrassment in me. I could barely trip in middle school and turn bright red or spill at lunch and walk away in shame. All because of my mother’s reaction to me accidentally breaking the table.

Becca W-Section 005