•what I really meant to say•

...is rarely what tumbles out.  What did you try to say today?

•when are they going to come out?•

When you are an adult...
and you find someone you love very much...
like Mommy loves Daddy...
and Catrina loves Laurie...
and Michael loves Karl...
you might want to use your seeds, then, to make a baby...
to start a new family, your own family.

Shattered

Whether or not you choose it, it seems shattering a life is much like shattering anything else.

The initial breakage is utter chaos. Your feet are bare, and there you are, standing in the middle of shards, that cup of coffee you were so looking forward to splattered on the floor, the wall, the table and chair legs. Who knew liquid could travel so far propelled only by the force of a mug hitting the ground? Who knew the pieces of the mug could bury themselves in dark corners, under the china cabinet, in the next room over? Who knew a mug could break into so many individual pieces, each one a memory of the lovely thing you once had?

And that’s the tricky part—the way the mug’s pieces are suddenly so lovely to you. Suddenly, all you can see is the work and love that went into this handmade thing, the investment of time and energy at the wheel and hope in the firings, the beauty of the glaze.

Somehow, in your grief, you don’t remember the hairline fracture that ran through the whole thing—the flaw that meant it was simply a matter of time before the mug broke anyway.

********************

When a favorite mug of mine broke a few years ago, I was devastated. I guess that’s a little odd, but my feelings about mugs run deep—I’ve made many of the mugs I own, and when I'm in my active pottery-making mode, I am, in fact, a little obsessed with the making of them. And while this particular one wasn’t made by me, it was one I loved dearly, and I’m sure most people won’t exactly be able to relate to the level of grief I felt about breaking it. I cried a good bit. I kind of hated myself for losing my grip on the poor thing. And I couldn’t bear to throw out the pieces. I had no idea what I would do with them—the mug was far beyond any hope of repair—but I gathered up as many pieces as I could, washed them carefully, and set them in a bowl on my kitchen counter, where they stayed for about a year and a half.

Over the next few days, I came across a shard or two of the worst kind—the little slivers that get stuck in feet or fingers and make them bleed. There weren’t many left at all—we did a pretty good job cleaning them up. But the ones I found hurt a lot, and they made me so sad all over again.

The other night, I was looking for a photo to use as a new blog header, and I kept opening photographs that were just like those little slivers of stoneware—painful reminders of something I’ve shattered. Unlike the mug, this shattering was done consciously. And somehow, that makes the shards feel that much sharper.

Eventually—just last fall—I had an epiphany about the shards of mug. It occurred to me that stoneware is fired well above the temperature at which I fire silver clay, which meant that I was easily able to incorporate those shards into my jewelry designs. I could create with this broken thing; I could transform the mug and my grief about it into something new and very beautiful.

Is grief always like that, on the other side? And is this what people mean when they say that you have to sit with grief? That you have to clean the shattered pieces, gather them into a bowl, and go about your life as best you can, taking whatever comfort you can manage in the knowledge that you needn’t throw out the pieces if you don’t want to?

And then one day, when you’ve seen that bowl so often that you’ve almost reached the point of no longer seeing it, you’ll glance in its direction, and you’ll see it as if for the first time, and with enormous joy, you’ll realize exactly what you saved those pieces for.

•can't blog it: open season•

OK, here's a good one. Blogger walks into a bar... and runs right into something she can't write about online. Certain People Might Be Reading.

I know, I know-- ridiculous! But it has happened. A thing has happened, and I guess it must be essay-worthy, because I'm certainly not hashing it out here. So! I hereby turn this over to you, dear readers. What have *you* wanted to write about, but been unable to post? Please share. Here at HaMama, you have the floor. Chances are, your Certain People aren't following you around the blogosphere. (small voice) I mean, at least not all the way into the comments of this unpost. xox

•pretty much everything•

Perfect. (Comma, the need to be.) Is it learned? On the way home from Berkeley, we started talking about how hard it is to work against the crushing need to be perfect. Here at Half Assed Mama, we've been struggling with that for most of our adult lives. It's a good fight. Perfection is alluring... and also a complete and utter illusion. (Read: waste of time.) For me, at least, one way out from under the spell is to fully embrace the opposite. Dot com.

My game plan? Celebrate flaws. Half-ass it, as a rule. You would think it'd get old, but honestly-- the more I relax my standards, the more attainable "perfect" becomes. What is perfection, anyway, but a decision we make? I'm looking around at a sea of wholes. A life, with all its ridges and creases. Some friends and I have a corny way of nudging this along. "Choose life," we say, and laugh. It works. xox

•swore I'd never•

The list is long. Before having a baby, I had ideas of absolute grandeur. No store-bought wipes. Nothing conventional. And, when the time came for sandwiches, crusts would never, ever be removed.



Behold, the Millennium Falcon sandwich-cutter. A Christmas gift.

Also featured in today's episode of What Kind Of Mother Am I? A mayonnaise sandwich. Requested by the three year old for his lunch, and, in my weakened, uncaffeinated state, agreed to--with crusts removed, a la spaceship.

Not *all* of my why evers have been replaced with why nots, but some mornings it feels that way.

•failing•

A failure is contingent. You have to attempt, in order to fail, and it is always so good to be attempting something. Failing means doing, trying, working. I live to fail--what better to remind me that all this (grand, sweeping gesture) is earned?

Don't let fear get in your way. Fail, damnit, then get up and fail again.

Nice idea, Harvey. Now, how about you take that pink machine out of the closet and clear off the sewing table you're currently using as a "desk"? That favorite pair of jeans won't repair themselves. xox

Cranky

At the moment, nothing is working. I've been wanting to write something--anything!--here for a week, and nothing wants to get written. I've been trying to prepare jewelry for a sale I'm supposed to be having with a friend in, oh, two weeks, and nothing, apparently, wants to get made. Every new design I want to try (and one that's been limping along for some time now, refusing to happen properly) fails utterly. I could go into details, but they bore even me.

I'll just say that it seems mighty unfair when one isn't procrastinating, and still nothing creative happens. Cranky making. Almost as if one is supposed to be doing something else entirely--walking the dogs somewhere nice, say--and one is stubbornly failing to receive the message from the universe. Perhaps because one has one's metaphorical fingers in one's metaphorical ears, and is metaphorically sing-songing, "La la la...I can't hear you!"

Right now, I'm going to go put one small piece in the kiln to see what happens (a brazen waste of electricity, by the way). Maybe it'll work this time, and my day (week, month...year!) will be redeemed.

And if not, at least I'll have the satisfaction of smashing the glass cabochon out of it with a hammer in order to send the silver off to be recycled. Because smashing sounds smashing right about now.

Oops

On the left, we have the jug from which the apple cider came. It was full to the brim when I started my journey to reduce it to apple cider syrup. On the right, the finished "syrup." It went a little longer than it should have.

Sharp-eyed observers will note that the jar on the right is upside down. It's been that way for a good 24 hours now--I just wanted to see if the substance inside would move. The answer is...no. Not at all. It has not budged.

Now, in my defense, this stuff actually tastes pretty good (like spiced apple caramel or taffy). If you can scrape it out of the jar. I suppose I could set it in a pan of hot water to melt it a little, and then reconstitute it a bit by adding water or apple juice to it.

But that sounds like so much work. I think I'd rather ship it to Lis's brother and sister-in-law in Schenectady, so it can live at the back of their fridge and commune with the apple spackle Lis made while she was there. You don't think they'd mind, do you?