A Season of Change

Hours tick tock into a day. Days flip like cards into weeks. Weeks fall into months. I’m always amazed by the amount of time passing through my life. Time feels like it happens around me instead of through me.

Lost in minutiae, I don’t see the minutes marching by me. I have to admit, I like being lost in the flow most of the time. Throwing clay on the wheel. Rolling a slab for a vase. Mixing and painting a teacup or bird. Creating is my way to be lost and found in time. 

Summer is gone and it’s September?

It’s hard to believe. Covid has turned everything upside down worldwide causing so much pain, sorrow, anger and fear. Fall is coming but not with schools starting or harvest festivals or art shows or open studios.

I remember how excited my children were to go back to school. I think of how many will not even be able to go kindergarten. They won’t be able to run into a freshly decorated classroom with their names on cubbies, new paints on easels and sharpened pencils ready to use.

Bye Bye Birthday parties and hello Birthday drive byes. 

My grandson’s 1st birthday was in late August but with Covid restrictions, a traditional birthday party was out of the question. But my lovely daughter came up with a creative way to give her baby his first birthday anyway. 

With The Hungry Caterpillar theme, we went to work making clay ornaments. 

A caterpillar made of cupcakes. 

And a flying butterfly from clay. 

Luckily, it was a nice day for an outside, drive-by party. And everyone did a great job of staying safe, enjoying cupcakes and celebrating baby Cieran’s first year on our planet (in spite of Covid).

    

Lost time. 

Six months. I can’t believe that Covid has been here that long already. I spent many days, weeks and months between denial and fear. As a self-employed person, I clung to my routine. I threw and rolled and painted and fired and glazed and fired again.

Even as my shows were cancelled and galleries closed, I filled my studio shelves with bowls, birds, vases and teacups. I did social media promotions, online craft fairs and opened an Etsy shop. I worked and waited and hoped it would all end soon. 

 A season of change. 

Yes, Covid is still here. I’m still creating and working. But I’m still worried and wondering how and when will all this end? Will my granddaughter ever get to run happily into her classroom? How can we all change and recover together?

As I leaned on Mother Cedar this morning, I felt a sliver of warm sunshine and heard a message. “Take this small slice of light and let it into your soul. Let it warm you and lift you and heal you. And give it to everyone around you.”

Moving while Staying in Place

I’m the first to admit, these past five months created many new challenges, difficulties, sorrows and fears. As an artist, I saw my opportunities fall like bricks one by one and the bricks keep falling. As a mother, I worried for my sons, daughter and grandchildren’s health and safety. As a friend, I lost connections when I needed them most. 

There were many times, I felt my heart and soul cringe at the hard shell building around my city and country. Seeing violence and fear shatter so many lives, I found myself building a shell around myself, too. 

Creating from inside helped me out. 

With more inventory than opportunities, my head said it was time to stop making. Stop throwing. Stop building. Stop painting. But my heart cried out louder saying making, throwing, building and painting is your only hope right now. 

Creating is your only move toward light, even if everything you create has to stay home. 

It became a very slow process. I had no normal routine. I didn’t set a schedule and there was no deadline to meet. But I threw small bowls. I built new teapots and painted new birds. 

Moving closer. 

I know I’m lucky in many, many ways. I am healthy. My spouse and children and grandchildren are all fine. Even as they struggle to juggle home, work and babies. They are finding their way in this crazy covid world. 

And they are moving closer to home. This month, after 6 years away, I welcomed my daughter, son-in-law and grand-baby back to Oregon. And my son also moved closer to us. 

Now on Mondays, we have Meyer and Cieran and Colin and Caitlin and Kyle to see. Now we  get to walk with them to the park. Watch them swing. Slide down the slide. All at the same park where my now grown ‘children’ used to play. 

Learning a new pace in the same place. 

This difficult time forced me to break the shell of routine. Work away worry. Discover moving slowly is my new pace. And welcome my family home while staying in place. 

How about you? Is it possible to stand aside from the pain and fear, just a little? To look beyond these five months and see some light, movement, possibilities and maybe, some good?

You Just Never Really Know.

One day, you dream of doing or making or being or creating or loving but you don’t see any way that it might work out. You don’t have the skills or the place or the equipment or the time or the opportunity. 

All you have is a dream that’s like steam on a mirror. You can see a vague form. You have a sense of presence and possibility that feels warm and inviting. But you can’t reach out and grab it. Not yet.  

Waiting is not fun. 

Patience is not my strong suit. I get so frustrated when I’m waiting for anything, anywhere, anytime. And yet, I know I can’t push time forward or backward because I am just one element, one blink of the immensity of time. Time is not mine. 

But when I see the future of an idea or a creation, I want to do it and see it now. And yet, at the same time, I know creation is not about the destination, the end point, the result. It’s about the journey. And the journey can take some crazy curves. 

Clay, my teacher. 

I love clay. It’s soft and cool and so wonderfully squishy. You can throw it and mold it and roll it. I can make it into cups, bowls, vases as well as masks, figures, flowers and faces. I can paint it and carve it and enjoy it’s pure, essential color. 

But it will not be rushed or pushed. It will only become in its own time. 

And I have learned to honor that even as I chomp at the bit of time. It’s a life long lesson in patience that is taking me a lifetime to learn. 

And that’s ok. I like all the life in and around me and I hope I get to keep living it for a long time. But since my sweet Jilly died suddenly in March, I’ve been shocked into the reality that time can stop suddenly for anyone at anytime. That fear has been chasing me lately, making me run faster and hurry. Yet at the same time, I’ve found myself holding my breath. 

But without breath, there is no life. 

And so clay, once again teaches me slowly to be here, in each roll, slab, turn of the wheel to be in each minute, each day, in each breath. That what I dreamed but never thought I could do, I can. What I thought would never happen, does. And an opportunity I’d given up on, comes to me. 

Breathe. Because you just never know. 

And that’s a good thing.