In the past week or so, my husband and I have managed to shatter no less than four items: two glasses and two plates. By the third one, we started wondering what the heck was going on. It’s not like that’s the norm in our house.

Then, one night I was getting ready for bed and Hubby was in our room wrangling the boys toward story reading and teeth brushing. In reality, I believe Robby was jumping on the bed and Sam was still racing cars all over the floor. Then I heard Hubby yelling, “No. No. Noooooooo!!!!” and then the sound of shattering glass. When I ran out I found one of our framed posters shattered all over the floor in our bedroom. (Yes, we still have tons of framed photos and stuff that still have yet to be hung. Yes, they lean up against the walls of many rooms. Yes, we have been in this house for nearly six months and we are still not done moving in.)

And so, we both looked at each other, realizing that the previous four broken items were really just preparation for this one very huge one. Glass was all over the bedroom floor. I had to keep both boys up on the bed while Hubby meticulously cleaned all the shards which had literally scattered in a ten foot radius.

But oh, the irony - This framed poster was something I had given to my husband for his birthday the year we started dating. It was a print of a painting he had seen when he was in Paris and had told me about. He said he had never been able to find it again. When his birthday came along I set out to accomplish the task, which ended up being so much more than I’d expected. It took weeks, and from what I remember I ended up having to hire this company that specialized in finding rare prints. Seriously. When they found it they mailed me a little xerox copy of it to make sure it was the right one. It was all very stealth, like I’d hired some sort of undercover group to find a poster.

Anyway, he loved it when I gave it to him. I have yet to top this gift. I might have come close had we actually been able to attend the US Open.

The painting is Toulouse Lautrec’s “Le Lit” (The Bed). As you can see, it is of two people sleeping cozily in a big, comfy bed. What was always so weird about it to both of us, and to anyone who had the occasion to enter our bedroom (because it always hung above our bed - that is, whenever we’d actually taken the time to hang it up), was that it was so obviously us. The man on the right is Hubby. There’s no question about the resemblance. The real controversy about this painting, from what I can remember, is the question of whether or not the person on the left is another man, potentially alluding to Toulouse Lautrec’s rumored homosexuality.

For us, this is not an issue because a) I care not whether Toulouse Lautrec is homosexual (obviously) and b) I have short hair. Even I think the person on the left looks like me. And yes, they are sleeping on our proper “sides” of the bed.

So now, does anyone else find it a wee bit symbolic that my child rammed his race car into a picture of an image of my husband and I peacefully sleeping, thereby shattering it into oblivion? Anyone?  I say symbolism, people.