memory

my mother took classes when we were young.  i think it was her chance to get out of the house one night a week.  dad had bowling night.  i think that was wednesdays.  she took ceramics…decoupage…needlepoint…

i liked ceramics the best of her classes.  it wasn’t actual pottery classes – they painted the greenware and the teacher brought it somewhere to fire, and then bingo, christmas gifts.  she painted ceramic christmas trees for our household and for her parents – the kind with little plastic lights that sit in little holes on the branches, and the whole thing is lit from within by a lightbulb. 

she’d bring home little greenware animals for my sister and me to work on.  it wasn’t just painting – we’d have to carefully smoothe down the seam that ran down the center of the molded piece…then figure out what color to paint it.  i did a bright yellow goat and painted the bell around its neck a sloppy green that spilled over onto the baby goat’s little chest.  my sister did a tiny skunk that she first painted black and then painted green. 

my mother did pretty work.  i have a small goose stretching its neck high – it’s graceful and the eyes were painted with a careful hand.  and a small pudgy duck to keep the goose company.  and my aladdin’s lamp.  for some reason when i was little, i wanted to be aladdin.  not ”jeannie” with the harem costume – but aladdin.  i was a tomboy.  my aladdin lamp is brown with black - swirly lines and lamp details.  it’s upstairs on my bureau.  there are also a rooster and a hen that perch on top of one of the dining room hutches at my parents’ current home.  and toads and frogs.  ashtrays, back when more people smoked…all kinds of things.  

when we got older and college loomed on the horizon, she went back to work.  no more time for ceramics classes…i think it’s too bad that she didn’t make the time for something for herself.  i remember that time – the time of ceramics and bowling and mom at home and endless summers – maybe there was more going on that i just wasn’t aware of.  i was a child then.  things were far less complicated.