After a long day at work going from CPR training first thing in the morning to a quick lunch and then meetings and making cupcakes for my son’s birthday at school tomorrow, it was a welcome respite to head to the local island hobby shop tonight to paint wine glasses with some friends. Before my first baby was born, I used to frequent the hobby shop. I took every class they offered and spent hours making ceramics and learning how to throw a pot on the wheel, not to mention the trimming, glazing, and firing that comes after the initial creating! Here’s what I remember loving about my time there and why I was so willing to devote some much of my life to lumps of clay and colored glazes. It’s the feel and motion of the soft clay as it rotates around and around the wheel, the sometimes hypnotic act of creating something from nothing. Because the motion of the wheel and the addition of water squeezed onto the clay with a sponge can make the clay very fragile as you mold it, collapsing in on itself with one small slip of a finger or jerk of the foot pressing the wheel and making it speed up, it requires all of your mind’s ability to focus on just that one thing, the formation of the dirt or clay into something useful and/or artistic. Even making a mold from slip, you have to pay attention to the steps to go from slip to hardened mold carefully or your mold will not come out as you planned. And glazing, well it’s possible to chat and gossip while you are painting or glazing a piece, but it may not come out as perfect as you would have liked if your focus was divided among your creation and your friends.
I don’t make it to the hobby shop much anymore, and mostly when I do, it’s to take my kids there to enjoy creating something as much as I used to do. I create other things now, special experiences and memories for my kids, written stories of our lives together, and opportunities for them to flourish, find their own way, and enjoy life, but I do occasionally miss my days making something at the hobby shop. Mostly I miss the lack of time I have to devote to it, and the ability to focus so fully on something completely creative and purely for pleasure, but that’s part of what growing up and having a family is all about. Time is short, you learn how to focus in short spurts and come back to it later when interrupted, and pleasure takes on a whole new meaning. Pleasure is the story my friend was telling me tonight about the cute things her 3 year old son was saying to her at dinnertime. Pleasure is going on a treasure hunt with my kids or enjoying an ice cream cone with them for no particular reason. And for now, that’s enough. I’ll have time to go back to the hobby shop when the kids are grown, but until then, I’ll place my focus and pleasure in my family, so that I won’t regret not having those snippets of time with them later because I was playing with clay.
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