By Michele Fry, © 1996
Aunt Lucy was a potter. She was always making pots
from hunks of clay she dug around her
home.
I watched her make her miracles.
She’d sit and spin that mud –
first a cylinder would form, then
a belly, neck, and collar would appear.
Lucy’s hands and her wheel always worked
as a team to sketch a spiral,
fluid-feeling form.
I never guessed her difficulty dealing
with the limits
of a homespun clay – never
knew whether it was Lucy’s
predetermined WILL that brought a pretty
fluted vase forth
from a shapeless muddy base, or if each piece appeared
from some desire of its own. She wouldn’t tell, and
I still wonder, “Did she know?”
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We never had a clue what might turn up in
our Christmas stockings,
either, with a note in Lucy’s wildly
flourished hand, which read:
“When
you get to know this mug (or bowl), I hope you’ll like it
just
as well as I do . . . but if not, please
feel free to bring
my Mudbaby
home, and choose another you might
like to
have
and hold.”
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Gossips in the family thought Aunt Lucy
was a showoff,
or a self-promoting bitty who didn’t give
quite fully –
but I knew her as a mentor, a tender,
doting
Mother, who loved her family fully
AND her Mudbaby offspring, and
wanted both to share a cozy home.
Lucy told me “Potting is as basic as the
sea . . .
each wave hits the shore a little
differently.” She
thought an oversized mug which wasn’t
popped from a mold
and duplicated a hundred-thousand fold,
captured something of the spirit
of Creation. Offered
food for the Soul’s contemplation. Once when I complained
her “matched sets” weren’t a perfect match, she quipped: “There’s no two
leaves alike on any tree. If that’s good
enough for God, it’s good for me!”
I think Lucy felt a call to add some texture to our lives.
She hoped her offerings, rightly
placed, might
draw us back to natural ways; that
evidence
of human hands could radiate a ray of
comfort when we felt ourselves
displaced, and keep us
thoughtfully
aware
of our uniqueness.
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And I do swear I feel “acceptance”
pulsing through her wares, as though the simple melodies I heard her humming
when she glazed, tended kilns or cleaned up spills, were imbedded deeply there.
Despite her love for design and great
attention to detail, Lucy’s comfort with the
accidental warp, multi-textured forms,
undulating rims, even little cracks
and dings, somehow caress my daunted
spirits with her care.
But then, I saw her put it there.
