Tag: choosing repair over replacement

Riding Shotgun Down the Avalanche

How Conflict Became Our Path to Connection

I listen more closely. This song is haunting, beautiful. Is it a song of exhilaration, like I hope, or one of sorrow? This best new song I never heard until Apple Music served it up to me last night is the latter. I have been fighting with it ever since.

I got home and looked it up.  Shawn Colvin  released this song in 1989, more than 30 years ago. As you might deduce from the title, the writer feels out of control. She deeply loves her partner yet there are deeply destructive elements in their relationship. I can relate to this.

We had a fight a few months back where I stomped out of the house. I drove off aimlessly, ended up in Cedar Key. It took far longer than the hour and a half travel time it would have taken me if that had been my direct intention. I wanted to see the Gulf of Mexico. It will always be the Gulf of Mexico for me. He provoked me one time with that Gulf of America nonsense.  I spent the night. He had my location. Still sharing location is a signal I know he understands.

There is a pattern where he comes in so sweetly to wake me in the morning with a kiss. And then we have a raging argument within the hour. I have come to realize that because he gets up so insanely early, that he’s had time to get something on his brain he HAS to talk with me about. Meanwhile I have not had coffee yet and want my early morning peace. It isn’t a great combination.

We both can get so distressed that we break things. And although I am generally the one who sweeps the debris from the broken dish, or the destroyed TV remote, we are both responsible enough to look within ourselves the for where we contributed to our conflict and make reparations with each other. Although sometimes it is “just because”, I get flowers quite often after such occasions.

I have come to understand that conflict is his way of getting to a level of emotional connection beyond superficial discussions of things like the weather or what each of us have done today. It gets beyond the next deeper level of logistical discussions about dinner or what to do together for fun this next weekend.

 Growth through conflict isn’t the greatest avenue, I think. But he makes sure we do connect. I deeply appreciate this. The glue that puts us back together is stronger than the perfection of a boring cup. The boring cup is what broke my first marriage. It took me over 20 years to try again.

I go back to thinking about this song, that I played over and over again, seeking to melt it into my soul. Exhilaration is what I want. I saw something magical and beautiful within him when we met.

Sunset Over Ramsau Bei Berchtesgaden, Bavaria, Germany February, 2016

This man, this person, had lost almost everything that was important to him in the aftermath of traumatic brain injury, PTSD, and had back injuries he was just getting past. He had served what he had come to see as a dishonorable cause in Iraq. After that series of losses he had almost taken his own life. He failed at that and I am eternally grateful.

I didn’t know all that right away. What I knew is that on an early date he took a three mile walk with me around the perimeter of our neighborhood to enjoy the Christmas decorations. During the community parade of decorated golf carts that zipped by us, we strolled through darkened streets sprinkled with colorful lights. And I loved it.

It was quite a while later that I realized how physically painful that must have been. I know now walking anywhere is not his typical idea of a great time. He would have preferred to be in one of those golf carts.  He was truly smitten with me. 

What brought us together, this man from South Alabama who drove a pickup truck? Who I imagined I would go out with once out of curiosity and probably never again? He liked rocks and gemstones. “You will probably think this is crazy he said, but I think they have properties that affect people”.

And my heart took flight. I love rocks and minerals! There are bowls full of them around my house. I also consider that they have properties that affect their environment or the person who wears them. And as an antidote to boredom, not being able to go, or do or work, he had taken to learning to cut them. He took classes in North Carolina to improve his skills at the William Holland lapidary school while I was off visiting Croatia and then Germany for a couple of months.

We sat together falling in love over the next summer as he ground away on gemstones. The hum of the grinding and of the machine soothed me and drowned out the ever-present background drone of the television, the one that was literally never on at my house next door. And now he had a dream.

While I was off completing what I thought would be one last work rotation in Wiesbaden Germany, he cemented his plan to attend gemology school in Carlsbad CA. I encouraged his dream of attending GIA  to become a Graduate Gemologist. He wanted to know what he was buying to cut.  His GI Bill would pay a lot of the expenses. My credit score enabled us to rent an apartment with a view of the Pacific Ocean from the swimming pool and the exercise room.

California

He could not have gone without me. Not with a 12-year-old son who would have to attend school. I would never have had the opportunity to go without him. It was a grand adventure.

After driving cross country out with the contents of that pickup truck, my car, his son, our two dogs, we furnished our dream with thrift store offerings. We also discovered suitable items from the leftovers of neighbors who’d discarded them. They had moved on in pursuit of their own dreams, or perhaps their dissolution. San Diego, the desert, beaches with cold water and cliffs and sunsets instead of sunrises, felt amazing.

Locked Bicycles. Commitment. Contrasts.
Bicycles Above A California Beach, Carlsbad, CA 2019

Meanwhile we fought about our differences. There are so many. Wonder Bread vs Dave’s Killer. Recycling vs throw it all away in the same can. Liberal vs Conservative. We broke up when we came back East. But it didn’t stick. It never stuck. We’d work things through. Our relationship deepened. It is not the easiest path, this growth through conflict, yet we persisted. Both of us.

Growth Through Conflict

Our relationship set me off on a course of deeper personal growth than I would have ever undertaken on my own. We’d have an argument, I would run away, determined never to return. After I few days, I would consider my own beliefs and question them. Where he was wrong, was clear from the beginning! It took more consideration to acknowledge my own flaws.

 Discovering sometimes obvious places where I also needed to grow, I’d write it out. When the inevitable call to come to dinner arrived, I would eventually return. We would discuss. We would both apologize. We’d course correct. I have journals filled with these stories.

After five years, we married. Ever the encourager, it was genuinely fine with me that he took his final exam to become to become a certified jewelry appraiser on our honeymoon. We have created a beautiful home together. And we continue to thrive into our third year of marriage.

 We are the irresistible force of water that meets the immovable granite boulder. There is stimulation and growth and deeper love in the smoothing of this giant piece of rough into an elegant polished specimen worthy of exhibition.

Large Crystals illuminated at the ABT Exhibit, Tucson Gem Show 2025
Polished Beauty. ABT Exhibit, Tucson, AZ 2025

We will result in a most beautiful specimen! We will be like the ones you in the gemological museum in Idar Oberstein in Germany.  Like the ones you see on display in Tucson at the gem show every February, we will inspire awe. This is my version of the results of the avalanche. This is my dream.

 I am certain that I am not simply riding shotgun when I am riding in the truck I willingly climbed into. This avalanche is the smoothing of the rough.  I believe this, the way I believe in him. The way he loves me despite my insistence that I am right, my Mighty Marian proclamations of Truth.  

Which I am quite often right, I am sure of it. That he is certainly the one who is mistaken or has been misled when he somehow continues to honorably serve a dishonorable master when it comes to our political arguments. And certainly, Dave’s Killer Bread is better that that white cardboard he still prefers even as he eats the healthier choice. And I observe in awe his ability to create beauty from rough stones or examine jewelry with an attention to detail I could never in a hundred years muster.

One of his fancy cut color change CZs, 2019. I loved the vivid green iteration of its color. Fantasy background Courtesy of Canva AI

I consider the possibility of a destructive version of a relationship avalanche. We argue. Occasionally we break things and then repair. We fight and reconnect. This is the story of choosing a relationship that smooths our rough edges, even when it feels like an avalanche Testing edges creates what comfort never can. We are getting better at it. It is exhilarating.

Back From The Grave

Finding meaning in small acts of repair

I try to figure out how to make the little red ears stand up. They did, when this cute little stuffed dog toy came out of the package.

Stuffed lamb chop sits propped up by a container of sewing notions. A spool of thread and small pair of scissors lays in front of it. Marian Haftel Smith Copyright 2026
I’m Healed!

He had a loud and wonderful squeak when he was brand new, less than a week ago. But that squeak, I know this, that squeak is engineered. It hits a frequency that sounds like distress to a retriever’s ears. It is no accident. The toy companies know exactly what they’re doing. They design these toys for destruction.

And Jesse? Jesse is just being what we humans bred him to be. Apparently no retriever dog’s toy is officially dead until the squeaker has been torn of its cloth body. This must be accomplished! Our retriever lives by this law and then mourns the loss of his prey. It’s no fun anymore!

The Lamb Chop laid sprawled on the floor, those cute little red ears hanging by the proverbial thread. One arm, torn off at the seam, was visible across the room. I found its squeaker, surgically removed through the armpit, when I stepped on it in the kitchen. That woke me up before I even had coffee.

What am I doing? There are so many other things I could be doing. But here I am I repairing a dog toy when there is so much to do. Important things, perhaps. Things that would require deeper thought than this hand sewing with needle and thread.

But my hands are already moving. Threading. Stitching. Repairing something I know full well will be destroyed again. It may by tomorrow. I might save it for then, But maybe I will give it back this afternoon.

I want to call this wasteful. Part of me does call it wasteful. Still, another part of me knows that Jesse will be thrilled when his little Lamb Chop returns from the grave. I can already see his face when I give it back to him. I anticipate his eyes imploring me to go outside RIGHT NOW. His whole body will come to attention. He’ll grab it gently at first, almost reverently before our game begins again.

I will throw it out across the yard. He will seek to catch it in the air, which he often manages to do. Clever dog! When he misses, he will pick his toy up off the ground and shake his head violently as if he’s angry with his failure. He will bring it back for me to throw, again and again. And again. And again, yet another time.

Awaiting The Throw

How wonderful to be so excited! This, I think, is why we love them. But here’s what I’m sitting with: I’m part of a system I am only dimly aware of as my fingers are stitching.

The pet industry wants me, expects me, to throw this away and buy another. That’s the design, toys that last a week or maybe two. Squeakers are engineered to trigger prey drive so intense the toy cannot survive it. They are inexpensive enough, especially at Christmas time that replacement feels easier than repair. The whole cycle repeats forever and ever amen.

I’m disrupting that cycle, only slightly. I already bought the toy. I’m already in the system. My small rebellion, this Sunday afternoon, doesn’t change much.

Except that it changes something in me. When I repair instead of replace, I’m practicing something. It’s about refusing the convenience of this toy being disposable, at least for this moment. Perhaps it is also demonstrating love for Jesse in a way that feels right to me, even if it’s terribly inefficient.

And definitely, I think I’m maintaining a cycle that serves me more than I want to admit. Jesse destroys, I repair. Jesse destroys, I repair. He needs me to fix what he breaks. I need to be needed. I should not need to be needed, should I?

What if I just bought him toys that last longer? Indestructible rubber instead of cloth? I have done that. Those toys are not warm and fuzzy. Those, I do not have to sew, and he’d still have toys. But they aren’t cute.

And then I wouldn’t have this. This quiet Sunday afternoon with needle and thread, with its anticipation of doggy joy. I have this small act of care that feels like love made visible.

Does that make me devoted or stuck? .

Our pets live in the present moment in a way we humans often don’t manage. They remind us, like the emissaries from the angelic realm I believe they are, that the present moment is the best place to be. They may not literally be angels, but they are pretty darn close.

Jesse doesn’t wonder if playing fetch is a good use of his time. He doesn’t calculate the value of his joy. He just… is. Present. Fully alive in this moment.

And here I am, trying to learn that from him while simultaneously asking myself if sewing his toy is worthwhile. The irony isn’t lost on me.

I finish the last stitch. The red ears don’t stand up quite the way they did when the toy was new, but they’re attached. The squeaker is back inside. The arm is reattached.

Lamb Chop whole again, for now. I know this won’t last. I know I’ll be doing this again soon, or the toy will finally be beyond all repair and I’ll have to let it go.

But for now, I’ve kept something from the grave. I’ve said, “Not yet. Not today”.

And perhaps that is enough. Maybe the question isn’t whether this matters in the larger scheme of life. Maybe the question is what else am I keeping from the grave? What else am I repairing that’s meant to break? What other cycles am I in without fully seeing them? This is a lifelong pattern of mine. And I have not let it go.

Sometimes I think I ought to, like the leftovers I insist on putting in the refrigerator well knowing my husband is likely to throw them out before I am ready for that to happen. This is ingrained within me. I don’t have answers yet. I don’t know if I ever will, actually.

Sometimes I have an insight and gleefully nourish it for a time, only to lose sight of it. Then later after some error in thinking that causes me pain, or causes someone around me pain, I find that same insight again and hope to maintain it this time. I wince when this happens, more often then I would like.

But today I have a repaired toy. Our dog will be thrilled, and this moment of completion, temporary and small as it is, is mine.

It is designed by a system I want to buck, a pattern I’ve begun to question and wonder if I will ever have an answer. It is also meaningful yet possibly meaningless both at the same time.

I’m still learning to hold all of that without needing to resolve it.

For now, put away my scissors, needle and thread. I take the picture I will put at the beginning of this post that I will write. Jesse will come running when I call him with this toy in my hand.

He always comes, simply trusting that something good is coming. Maybe that’s the whole lesson right there.

Copyright 2026 Marian Haftel Smith