Nine days ago, a handyman came to our house. He replaced five broken panes of glass, and two broken storm doors.

Today, I got my answer to the unspoken question, how long will our house remain in one piece?

The answer is nine days. Nine.

Today, my youngest child threw a hairbrush at my second youngest child. There was a dispute over who had taken a bite out of a clay cookie. I’m still not sure who did it, but the little one felt he’d been unfairly accused, and throwing a hairbrush at his accuser seemed like the best course of action.

His accuser was sitting in front of the biggest window in our house, and the hairbrush missed.

You can guess what happened next.

I cried. And shouted. I made all the kids go away. Now, I’m sitting in front of the broken window, my face hard with a frown that won’t wipe off.

I know how to fix a lot of things. Windowpanes isn’t one. I’ve cut myself on glass more than once. Every time I think about replacing a pane of glass, I remember the smooth, sharp pain of a piece of glass slicing through my skin and a bead of blood rising out of the cut. I think about my slapdash, devil-may-care approach to measurement, which suits me just fine, but doesn’t work for windows with hard edges. Unlike fabric, it can’t be goosed into place if the edges don’t quite line up.

I’m sure the internet has a solution to this problem. I know the handyman would come back. But I don’t have any bandwidth for learning new skills. And if we are breaking glass every week and a half, that is going to become expensive really, really fast.

I’ve moldered about this week. I have an extroverted teenager who is lurking and making plans and then asking about them all the time. A bunch of Littles who aren’t doing school. Sometimes they’re playing, but sometimes they’re wandering aimlessly and starting fights.

A week that could alternately be My One Chance To Sew in Peace or My One Chance To Recover From Christmas is in real life neither of those things. I sew a bit more than usual. I rest a bit more than usual. And my aimless children break the windows.

I am tired. I can’t make it go away. I started antidepressants and they seemed to be working, but now I’m not so sure. With or without antidepressants, what is a reasonable response to one’s children breaking a window so soon after the others (some had languished broken for months or years) had been repaired?

The window that broke is the one that lets all the light into our living room. At this time of year, just past the winter solstice, we need all the light we can get. I don’t want to look through cracked glass every day. It occurred to me that maybe if they broke it right it will make a rainbow on the wall depending on the time of day.

I doubt it.

So my Christmas kind of feels like it ended today. Back to being a grown up. At least, right after I’m finished having a meltdown about the broken glass.