So one day the brown truck pulls up to the shop and it’s the skinny UPS guy, the one with the bad habit of stabbing the "sign it form" at me when he needs a signature. He’s delivering one my boxes. My first thought was, "Ah shoot, we got a returnee...what happened now?" Glass is more of an idea than a substance. It cracks easily.

When I opened the box, it was indeed one of my lights and it was indeed cracked. But it wasn’t regularly cracked, like in half or a chunk out of the lip. This one was broken in lots and lots of pieces, many smaller than a dime and it was scotched taped back together. It wasn’t glued, it was taped. Odd. Taped to the scotch-taped light was a note asking me to phone the sender.

She says that for years, the light was hung over her kitchen sink and it was her light. Odd. So then she tells me what broke the light. Her husband was fixing the sink one day and he’d forgotten to shut off the water completely. When he unscrewed the cold water handle, it shot straight up in the air, hit and smashed her light. She said that he felt so bad that he found as many pieces of glass that he could and spent hours taping it back together.

I let the silent mourning hang for a minute... then she asks, "Could I make her another?"

I told her that I’d made that light a few years before but trying to remake it was like trying to remake an omelet from two years ago... but I’d try. She expressed her thanks and says do your best. And I did, and I sent it off.

We chat for a bit, and she said that she’s really grateful for the second one, adding "You know, I knew I was home when I walked into my kitchen and turned on my light". Another pause and then, "Thanks... I can be home again."