My sweet mom has an artist’s heart and one thing she loved to do in the mid 70s of my youth was paint ceramics. It was a thing back then to go to a ceramics store and get a piece of molded, but not yet fired and glazed, pottery. You would take the pottery home and carefully sand the edges that had been left from the molds. Then you would carefully wet it all down in order to remove all the dusty particles and let it dry. Finally, you would meticulously paint it in however much detail you desired.
A serving bowl, a Santa plate, a set of birdies….. My mom was so good at it.
She made three intricate nativity scenes – camels, Jesus and Mary and Joseph, and wise men. She gifted a set each to both of my grandmothers and after they died she re-gifted them to some of us. They are beautiful treasures and so detailed that I am still – all these years later – in awe.
But she also made a big Jack-o-Latern that was fitted with a light bulb inside. It sat inside our living room window and we’d take turns remembering to reach inside it and turn it on so that it could be viewed by our neighbors passing up and down our street.
The lid – with a little squirrel and acorns – has lots of tiny little chips from lots of tiny little hands trying carefully to place it exactly right.
When she and my dad moved out of that house with that window, that ceramic pumpkin ‘lamp’ became mine. My birthday is on Halloween and giving it to me seemed fitting. No one fought me for it. Not even my brother, Jack.
My mom painted (and baked and sewed) in order to serve others and to save money and to create, yes. All of those. But I talked to her about the painting specifically yesterday and do you know what she said?
She said this type of painting started when a Norwegian lady showed her some techniques in a class at our church. Mom enjoyed it so much in the class that she thought to herself, “Maybe this is something I want to do.”
“It was something I was excited about,” she said. And she listened to the little arrow inside her pointing to that thought: “this could be fun!”
I have spoken a lot in this space about finding your ‘thing’ – the thing you’re excited about. The thing that compels your brain to think about something other than the ‘business’ of your life. And I’ll probably continue to. It’s that important.
Thinking about that pumpkin, now sitting in my room, re-iterates the point.
But something else occurred to me when listening to my mom tell me the story.
She went to a class.
In the midst of a bunch (!) of kids and a busy husband and a million reasons she had to not go, she went.
I love her for that.
I can’t wait to continue to hear about the things that speak to you – your own arrows pointing to your own “this could be fun!” And if you need a list to get you started, I have one.
Happy Halloween!
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