The day I broke the elephant was not a good day. To start, my father was deployed on a Coast Guard ship, so all of us were struggling with despondency. To make matters worse, both my siblings and I, for then we numbered three, were screaming and roughhousing up and down the house as my poor mother tried to clean it. Everyone in the house was trembling on the brink of emotional (and in my mother’s case, physical) collapse. That was the day I broke the elephant. My mom found the elephant online. It reminded her of a statue that her aunt used to have. She loved that elephant and was constantly reprimanding us, the children, who were equally enamored with it, not to play on it, not to jump over it, and absolutely not to ride it. Despite the occasional good intention, we paid spare attention. We began at …