January 30, 2005 - Sunday
This morning, as Harry was getting up from breakfast and starting to clear his things from the table, he dropped and broke his plate. We'd had french toast and there was probably syrup on either his finger tips or the rim of the plate or both, but as he lifted it up it slipped out of his hands and fell to the floor. It broke not quite cleanly into two halves, with just enough tiny fragments so it would really be impossible to repair. Harry stood dumbstruck for a couple of seconds, likely just surprised by what had happened. But then I could just about see his mind start to work through it all. There's no way to know what he was thinking, but I'm going to guess that there were probably several things; including, that was a really big noise, am I in trouble for dropping and breaking the plate?, why did that happen?, oh no! that was my plate.

I'm guessing, but I think it was that last one that stuck with him. This is the plate he'd been eating off since he's been using a plate, a gift for his birth from one of his mother's co-workers. It was a fairly simple plate in some ways, mostly green with a white bottom and a circle of white animals close to an exaggeratedly tall white rim that kept food from sliding off. It wasn't so much a child's plate, nor particularly Harry's favorite color, but it was his plate and now it was broken.

He talked about fixing it. We told him it could not be fixed. He said he wanted to get a new one just like it. We said that was unlikely. It was found at either an antique or second hand store of some kind, I'm not quite sure. I told him that maybe we could find him another plate that he liked, but there's little appeasing that kind of moment. Poor Harry.


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