Mudbabies

By Michele Fry, © 1996

 

(Dedicated to my niece, Jennifer, who spent many summer weekends watching me throw pots on my back porch and showing interest in my craft.)

 

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.