mmm, I love Kool-Aid!

Here is the text of President Obama’s “back to school” address, which will be shown tomorrow to schoolchildren across our great land – at least, the schoolchildren whose parents haven’t kept them at home.

Some people profess to being startled by this overreaction to the President’s “socialist indoctrination” of our youth. I am not. Nothing in American politics surprises me anymore. Frankly, the more ridiculous, self-indulgent, and illogical it seems, the less I am surprised.

I’ve read the President’s speech, and it didn’t set off any alarm bells in my head; to the contrary, I found it rather nice. Predictable, perhaps, but I don’t think the point of such a speech is to be mysterious. It was personal at times, and certainly encouraging throughout. I thought it hit all the right notes for a speech to America’s kids, many of whom are nonpartisan, all of whom can only stand to benefit from a little encouragement from the President of the United States.

I can’t think of a single good reason why any parent, regardless of his or her politics, wouldn’t want their child to hear such a harmless – and positive! – message. (Of course, I should probably play it backwards first, just to make sure.) If I didn’t like the President or his policies, I would still think that a speech like this provides a decent teaching opportunity/conversational piece for me and my child. I could say, “What did you like about it, Bobby? What didn’t you agree with, Jane? What do you think about what the President said, Alice?” (Yes, all of my fictional Republican children are apparently from the 1950s.)

It’s natural to think critically, even harshly about our political leaders. But the key word there is “think.” There is certainly nothing objectionable about the President’s speech in and of itself. So what it comes down to, I think, is that some parents – precious few, let’s hope – don’t want their kids to hear it because they just don’t want to risk them liking the President.

Because that’s how it starts, after all! All he has to do is build up a little credit with them – a smidgen of admiration – and they’ll wake up the next day tiny budding socialists, ready to redistribute wealth before recess!

I wonder why they have such a low opinion of their children (as if intelligent kids can’t like the President or even listen to his words without growing up to agree with his every position?), or their own influence over them, for that matter (are they not the ones responsible for raising their kids? Shouldn’t the, oh, lifetime or so they spend talking to their children, attempting to instill in them the values they hold so dear, carry just slightly more weight than a ten-minute speech by a man their kids will probably never meet?).

I know I’m a relatively new parent, and my daughter isn’t even in school yet, and it’s presumptuous and condescending of me to think I know anything about parenting, blah blah blah Ginger. But honestly, I really think that parents who disagree with the President (as I do myself, from time to time!) should realize that there’s a valuable lesson to be learned here, apart from the importance of education or civic engagement or relevant classroom discussion. In the current political climate, it’s more important than ever for children to be shown how to disagree with someone while still respecting them. How to dislike a person’s opinions without disliking him. How to be skeptical of someone’s agenda while still listening to the good things he has to say. These are all obvious things kids ought to know, but the sad thing is, I think many, many parents these days – both conservative and liberal – skip this lesson entirely.

(In case this wasn’t irritating and blowhard-y enough for you, my next post is going to be about this article, a shockingly good offering from Newsweek, of all magazines. I’ve got a bone to pick with you, hypothetical well-intentioned politically “progressive” white parents! Fun times ahead!)

Deleted.

I never saw it coming.  It was the last friend request I ever expected to receive.  My mother, my aunt – those were requests I could have understood, but my father?  My father, who only uses the internet to (a) read Portland TrailBlazers fan websites and (b) read Cleveland Browns fan websites?  My father, who has sent me perhaps three emails over the past ten years?  My father – a Facebook user?  Those poor souls in hell must be freezing about now.

“That’s great,” Dan said dryly. “Now your parental issues can play out in front of an audience.”

I added Dad back, automatically, because I felt I had no other choice – surely it is the outside of rude not to add one’s own father as a Facebook friend? – and spent the next hour creating a new special “family” list in order to filter my father out of almost everything I post, grumbling to my husband all the while, “But we’re NOT FRIENDS. We are FAMILY. Doesn’t anyone know the difference anymore?”

I thought my parents understood this.  They have often claimed they have no interest in being my friends.  I have friends.  They are my parents. It’s a different kind of relationship entirely.

Of course, my parents also have issues with boundaries, as nearly all parents (good or bad) do.  I’m their only child, and they are clingy and think they know everything about me, though it’s been ten years since I lived with (or even on the same side of the country as) them.  They used to periodically search my room, and over the years they found all my hidden notebooks and read my stories and my journals.  They only told me about this as a kind of afterthought after I’d left the house, and my weak, infuriated argument – “But…those were MINE! You had no right to read them!” – left them completely unmoved.

Anyway, I suppose I’ve become rather sensitive to my right to privacy where my family is concerned. It’s not that I post anything scandalous or incriminating on my Facebook page (I have a toddler, guys – how exciting can my life be?).  But on Facebook, anyone can eavesdrop on the conversations on your wall.  Even filtering my father out of my status updates and links leaves many, many other things open to his review and comment.  Yesterday I filtered him out of everything “interesting,” then viewed my profile as he could supposedly see it, and it was still way too much information, in my opinion.

“This is ridiculous,” I said to Dan.  ”I mean, I don’t want to have to filter every single photo I post. What if I got a tattoo, and I wanted to post a picture on Facebook? I would have to filter my father out first, so he wouldn’t have a heart attack and die on my account? I mean, what if I forgot?”

Finally I decided the whole thing was more trouble than it was worth, and made my Facebook profile a parent-free zone.  I guess this means I’m a big old paranoid thirteen-year-old girl, but Dad (and later Mom, I’m sure) will just have to understand.  So, we were only Facebook friends for about nine hours. At least I’ll always be their daughter, and isn’t that more important, anyway?

Happy Victoria Day

Happy birthday, dear Victoria, happy birthday to you.

There’s no adequate way to express how much we miss having you here, but we’re sending you our love from halfway around the world, and wishing you a year filled with wonderful adventures and many blessings!

so everyone’s a little bit racist, okay

(Subject heading swiped from Avenue Q, which I saw on Broadway! Original cast, front row center, suckers. Love you forever, Jill.)

I don’t know if what happened to Professor Gates is an example of racial profiling at its worst, a power-drunk cop at work, or your average police officer who just made a bad decision. I’m not sure anyone can really know for certain, except for Officer Crowley of the Cambridge police. Though if you ask me, it’s not even Crowley’s actions and poor decisions with Gates that prove he has some unresolved racial issues; it was the fact that his defense was that he CAN’T be a racist because, you guys! He once gave mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to Reggie Lewis! And a real racist would have just…let him die!

Right.

Anyway, whether Officer Crowley is guilty of racial profiling or not, the reaction by many to the arrest of Professor Gates has proven, yet again, that one can’t even suggest that race might have been involved in this (or any other) incident without raising the hackles of countless people who are convinced there are no real racists anymore. The moment you bring up the possibility that a white cop might treat a black man differently than a white man, a certain number of people in this country – dare I say, a solid majority? – stop listening and go all la-la-la-I-can’t-hear-you. These people all want to believe that racists are few and far between, and they all live in the South (hey, y’all) and vote Republican and like to shoot things for fun. “Racist” has become such a Bad Thing and a Bad Word that it’s something no decent person can bear to associate with another person, especially himself.

Maybe there should be another word, I don’t know, something less offensive, something that hasn’t been associated with some of our country’s most depraved people and actions and events. Because we’re all a little bit prejudiced, and there are times when we’ve all been guilty of some form of racism, even if it was just an unspoken thought we were later ashamed of. This doesn’t mean that we should passively accept the status quo, but this is what the status quo has been for a long time, and clearly we haven’t rid ourselves of it. And yet the moment anyone hears the word “racist,” they get defensive, or they get dismissive, or they start accusing minorities of “playing the race card,” because they simply cannot make themselves believe that a person who is not a registered member of a hate group could actually say or do anything – intentionally or not – that might be considered racist.

I know I’m not saying anything original here, anything that hasn’t been said a million times by way smarter people. (One of my favorite bloggers said it much better earlier this week.) It’s just too bad that our dialogue has to be stifled like this. It gets us nowhere. I think most people think of racist as one of the absolute worst things a person can be – and I guess it is, but I think it’s also one of the easiest things to be and, given our history in this country, one of the most understandable, too. It would be difficult for an American living in this day and age to be anything else by default. And that will never change as long as so many people close their eyes to it, believing that it is the exclusive domain of unapologetic outcasts, criminals, and terrorists.

pick yourself up, dust yourself off

It’s been one of those days with my future DRAMA MAJOR that leads me to question not only my sanity, but whether or not I should have ever become a mother.

And it’s barely noon.

Any of you have mental illness in your extended family medical history? I do. Some very bad seeds? Me, too. Unhealthy patterns in parenting? How about anger management issues, depression, and passive-aggressiveness?

That’s just my adoptive family. My biological family was one big Korean soap opera. And it’s harder to detach myself from the crazy in their family, since I am actually genetically related to them. At times, when I feel particularly shitty as a mother, I imagine that all the bad parenting qualities in both my families have coalesced into one perfect storm of nature and nurture and settled in me, with my daughter as the unsuspecting victim.

I remember when I first learned the truth about my birth family – specifically, about the abuse and misery my birthmother had inflicted on my sisters, and the fact that she was a truly disturbed woman who hadn’t wanted me because I was “another girl.” Also, I was born so prematurely, the doctors were sure I’d never lead a “normal life.” As it turns out, I was the luckiest of my birthparents’ daughters, because I was the one they gave up.

The night I learned all of this, I couldn’t sleep. Of course, it might have had something to do with being eight a half months pregnant with Abigail at the time. I just lay there in bed, hour after hour, asking myself, “Am I going to be like them? Am I going to be a bad parent?”

I think that most people have the potential to be good, even great parents. The truth I had never really confronted – until that night, facing down the skeletons in my family closet for the first time – was that most people also have the potential to be extremely bad parents. I decided I had probably not inherited some “bad parenting gene” that would doom me and my children to a life of unhappiness. But I would still have to be aware of my limitations, my weaknesses, and yes, my sins. I would have to be humble.

Sometimes, when everything is going well with Abigail and we’re clipping along for weeks on end with no major disasters or meltdowns, I forget to feel thankful for the relative peace. I may even get a little cocky, and start to think that I have something to do with how smoothly things are running. But days like today keep me humble and well-acquainted with my own faults, lack of patience topping the list.

I hate feeling so aware of my own powerlessness, when I can do nothing to make my daughter feel any better; when I put her down early for a nap and then punch a pillow in sheer frustration; when I sit numbly on the couch with a cup of tea in my hands and seriously – seriously – question whether someone like me (lazy! impatient! selfish! only child! needs alone time! has latent CRAZY GENES!) should have ever had a child in the first place. Too late to spare Abigail, but maybe she doesn’t need a sibling. Maybe, I think to myself, maybe there’s somewhere I could get a tubal over my lunch break.

Here’s where I should stop feeling sorry for myself and say something uplifting, something positive about motherhood. If I wanted to, I could say what a lot of parents say – that I’m aware of my faults, but that having a child has given me the perfect opportunity to work hard to correct those faults for the sake of another person. And that’s true, except you don’t have a child as a means to self-improvement. Abby deserves a good mom now, not a good mom-in-training.

If I were grading myself as a mother today, it would be pretty grim. Not even a gentleman’s C. But she’s napping, praise God and all the saints, and I have another few minutes to repair my tattered nerves. A deep breath, a sip of tea, and some lunch are in order.

Soon she’ll wake up, and I will still be here. I’m leaning towards still being here, anyway. And then we’ll start all over again.

my first day as a gym rat

A long, long time ago, I used to think that a person’s keychain (or chains) said something about her – namely, my name is Nikki and I am in fifth grade and these are all of my interests and hobbies and vacation destinations and places where my aunt in the Air Force has been stationed, colorfully depicted in miniature and strung together in a huge awkward clump of keychains that will not fit in my pocket and, moreover, seem a bit unnecessary considering my only key is my house key.

Nowadays, I still have a lot of interests and hobbies, but I have simplified my keychain. The only thing on it is the little remote for my car, my car key, my house key, a four-way holy medal (and if you have to ask what that is, clearly you did not attend kindergarten through sixth grade at Sacred Heart Elementary), and – as of today – my gym membership card.

Yes! There is a new member of my little keychain family! A tiny little gym membership card that I have to swipe each time I go into…MY GYM!

I’ve been a member of this gym for, oh, about a week and a half. And today was my very first visit. I have to tell you guys, I am not exactly a “gym person.” (Those of you who know me in real life are nodding to yourselves.) I am convinced that I look funny and ridiculous when I – well, when I do anything, but especially if it’s something in the active, sporty vein. So naturally I prefer to do my working out in the privacy of my own home; only, funny thing, I began to notice that ever since I had Abigail, that never actually seemed to happen.

There are always a million reasons not to work out when you’re taking care of a toddler. And when your husband is taking care of the toddler, there are a million other things to do. And even if you can convince yourself not to cook something or do chores (which is not hard, for me), you don’t exactly want to jump up and go run four miles, either. When I’m at home and I’m not with Abby, my favorite thing to do is…wait for it…sit there and take just one minute for myself ohdeargod. So, after months of only sporadic exercise, I accepted the fact that I was going to have to leave my house to work out.

Why don’t I just run? Because running outside is for stronger, better people than I am, who can run marathons (I can’t) and don’t live in North Carolina’s eternal summer. But even after taking the leap and joining a gym earlier this month, I was totally prepared to put off the inaugural visit till another day; all I needed was an excuse – any excuse – like, I don’t know, a migraine; an upset stomach; my babysitter backing out; very heavy rain. But none of these things happened. My babysitter came over punctually as always, and I felt fine, and it was sunny, and not even so hot. So I stuffed all of my “gym things” into my “gym bag” (ginkgo tote), waved at the baby girl, and took off for the gym.

I headed for the cardio machines and switched the channel on the nearest TV to Law and Order. Post-Lenny, sadly (may he rest in peace), but still in the Jesse L. Martin years. Treadmill for 30 minutes, elliptical for ten, weird stationary bike for five. Turns out I still hate stationary bikes.

While I was stretching, I also glanced at all the weights – real gyms, it turns out, are simply lousy with weights – before reaching the conclusion that I had absolutely no idea how to use 99% of the weights, and anyway wasn’t it about time I showered and went for that iced coffee I had been craving. But I am going to learn to use those weights, I really am. At least, some of them. Because I care about my…bone density, or whatever.

Bottom line, my first real gym experience was surprisingly pleasant. I still think I look ridiculous working out (and all the mirrors at the gym kind of confirmed that for me), but on the up side, no one else seemed to notice or care. Really, the people there were quite friendly, and (unlike the gym at my alma mater) no one seemed to be staring at my treadmill speed and secretly judging and/or competing with me. And now I have a gym card on my keychain! So, if my keys are lost and a stranger picks them up, he or she will know that I am a person who cares about her health, who is trying to maintain an active lifestyle.

Now I am going to eat a cheeseburger and French fries, and possibly some apple cobbler, too. Why do you think I joined a gym?

I’m almost through my memoirs, and I’m here

Hello, interwebs. Or at least, the four or five of you on the interwebs who still glance, occasionally, at this blog. I’m sorry for neglecting you of late (though I hesitate to presume that you noticed my absence, what with the economic crisis and the health care crisis and, most of all, the crisis we all face now that Michael Jackson is no longer with us). And no, I don’t believe that my snappy little Sondheim-lifted subject line will make it up to you.

I’ve just started working again, and our best local friend just left town, and my daughter is doing battle royale with her 2-year molars, and I have bravely joined a gym (that I have yet to visit…). But really, the truth is, I have no superb excuse for sucking so profoundly at time management these past few weeks and neglecting all (four or five) of you. I’m lazy, that’s the God’s-honest truth, and what with the heat and the humidity and the social demands and the job training and the syndicated television shows, it’s been oh, so difficult to imagine writing anything longer than a sentence-long Facebook status update. And let’s face it, those updates have really been taking it out of me, too.

It’s easy to disparage myself for my failure, but I must try not to become downcast by it, and instead press on. To victory. Or at least a regular habit of writing. I shall return.

But probably not till tomorrow, what with the new X-Files movie having just arrived from Netflix and all.

Father’s Day

To the best Abby-daddy I know:

Thanks for getting me into this mess. Thank you for keeping me sane through 24 hours of labor. Thank you for holding the household together when I was a postpartum hormonal wreck. Thank you for getting up with Abby every morning, for bathing her every other night, for being more than just her favorite playmate, and for coming home ready to parent, not just ready for dinner. Thank you for your prodigious (if equally perplexing) faith in me.

Thanks for being my best friend and equal partner in all this craziness. It’s a privilege to share it with you. ♥

if you can’t take the heat, step away from the kiln

You know, I signed up for pottery class because I thought it would be a nice break.  Four hours (including transportation), every week, when I am not with my toddler.  The first week, it felt strange to be away from her for such a big chunk of the day, but the second week I don’t know if I thought about her at all.  (Why yes, I am a candidate for Mother of the Year, thank you for asking!)

It’s definitely a break from my usual daily routine of extreme parenting, but I don’t know how nice of a break it is. The truth is, pottery class stresses me out.  I feel horrible about this – I took a chance, signing up for something completely new and outside my comfort zone (of spending what little free time I have with my ass in a chair, either reading or writing snappy emails and wordy blog entries); I spent what was, for me and my husband, a lot of money on this class; I was really, really looking forward to the entire experience.  And while there are parts of it I honestly do like, my teacher stresses me out so much the experience has been sapped of much of its enjoyment.

I feel like a wuss admitting this.  Really, it’s unlike me to be offended by anyone else’s brusqueness.  I am a fairly straightforward person myself.  I’m not easily overwhelmed.  I don’t like being coddled, and I don’t want or expect false praise.  But when you’re a beginner at anything – and I am a beginning potter in the true sense of the word, never having touched raw clay before this class – it is really not helpful to have someone standing over you, saying things such as “What do you think you’re doing?” and “You know I cannot do this for you.” Oh, and my personal favorite: “You may feel like a retard now, but you’ll get it eventually” (yes! Direct quote! I know, it’s almost impossible to believe that someone hasn’t given this woman her own children’s show on PBS).

As in any abusive relationship, there are apologies afterwards (“I know I can be kind of cranky or bitchy sometimes, I hope you understand that I really do think you’re doing well, and that’s why I’m pushing you”), but overall it’s just way more anxiety than I care to admit into my life for what was supposed to be a nice break.  When I know the instructor is watching me, I feel jumpy and nervous, and inevitably make more mistakes than I would otherwise.  I feel like one of those kids who has trouble reading aloud in class, whose teacher berates her so much that even after she learns to read satisfactorily, she probably has a lifelong stutter and paranoia about reading anything out loud. 

If you’re still with me, and haven’t ditched this entry after four solid paragraphs of whining, let me just add that our instructor also answers and talks on her cell phone at least twice during our three-hour class sessions.  I know we all lead very busy lives and all, and she has a job apart from teaching pottery classes (probably a good thing, in her case), but really – unprofessional, right?

We’ve also had a few rather bizarre conversations about my ethnicity, of all things.  We’re three for three so far.  In our first class, she asked me where I like to go for authentic Chinese food.  I replied that I’m not Chinese, but named the restaurant where we usually go – which I figured she wouldn’t like, since she said she preferred this gross pan-Asian place that has since closed (good thing; it made me sick the one time I went there).

In our second class, I happened to be wearing this shirt, and she asked, “Are you Korean?” I answered in the affirmative.  “Oh!” she said. “My doctor is Korean.” Uh-huh. Bringing your Korean acquaintance count up to…two, apparently.

In our third class, she showed us the stencils we would be using to carve our initials into the bottom of our pieces, so we knew which were ours.  She saw me writing “NC” on the bottom of one of my bowls, and suddenly exclaimed, “You know, you should write your name in Korean!”

I think I just gaped at her for a second or two, because, you know, my name is “Nicole” – and she knows it.  Nicole.  Greek, French, definitely Western; there’s no direct Korean translation.  Then she said, hilariously, “I could ask my doctor how to write it if you don’t know how.” I was just like, oh, yes! Please do that! That would not be awkward at all (for you)!

(Actually, because all Koreans do, in fact, know each other, I happen to be acquainted with her doctor. I think she speaks a little Korean; I’m not sure if she writes it.  Either way, wow.  Just wow.)

So, pottery class stresses me out.  I do not come home feeling refreshed and relaxed and stimulated; I come home feeling exhausted, a little bit stiff, and annoyed as hell.  And do I really need more stress in my life, from something that was meant to be my fun, lighthearted break from toddler-chasing?  I don’t think of myself as a quitter, but right now I’m of two minds about the whole thing.  I like the bowls I’ve made thus far, and I want to glaze them next week and actually see a finished product the week after.  I want to spend more time at the wheel and also try some hand-building.  I still love pottery, and I’d like to learn more about it, irritating teacher notwithstanding.  But honestly, when I think about going back next week, I don’t feel any real anticipation, just dread. 

It’s a tug-of-war between my curiosity and my impatience, my stubbornness and my “to hell with you” impulse.  At this point I’m really not sure which will win out. 

something new

Our friend Kazuko is a potter. She’s been working with clay for over fifteen years. She and her husband have known my parents a long time, so I remember when she first began learning at the wheel.

Kazuko is a lifelong artist who studied painting and weaving as a young woman in Tokyo, and none of us were surprised when she demonstrated a talent for pottery as well. But it was her artistic vision, even before she had truly mastered the technique, that amazed us all. She had unerring instincts when it came to choosing glazes, stenciling details, creating simple, eye-catching patterns for her plain bowls and vases and platters. She was able to envision the most beautiful objects in her mind and then build them out of clay. These were pieces of herself, taken from her artist’s eyes and mind and heart, and she had given them three-dimensional representation, made them real for us to see.

She gave me a few pieces of her early work, small bowls and squat teacups and the occasional vase. I loved and treasured these gifts, however quick she was to point out their flaws. She saw herself as very much a beginner, so of course it came as a shock to her when she found that people actually wanted to buy her work. Everyone pressed her until she agreed to create a certain number of pieces for a local arts show. Of course, every piece sold, and everybody told her she hadn’t charged nearly enough.

It became inconvenient for her to drive back and forth to the studio where she had first learned to throw, so her husband built her a little potter’s shed with her own wheel and kiln in the woods next to their house. With her own space, she began to experiment – different clay, different glazes, different styles, different patterns. Large vessels, small ones, functional ones, pieces for display only. She made her own stamps and stencils and designs, and hand-built vines and flowers and birds in flight. Her work filled the plain wooden shelves inside her shed and spilled over to the cinderblock steps in front.

My mother goes to every one of Kazuko’s shows, and usually buys me a new piece every Christmas. My father visits Kazuko’s shed from time to time and goes through her trash heap – finished pieces that she is dissatisfied with, for whatever reason – and she tells him to take anything he likes. My parents have a ton of Kazuko’s artwork at home, and I think at least half of it was brought home by my father, who loves castoffs, and who (like the rest of us) can never see the imperfections so glaringly obvious to Kazuko’s critical eye.

* * *

I love pottery, and I buy it often for myself or for others. Kazuko is one reason I love it; another is the centuries’ worth of Korean pottery, with the famous pale green celadon glaze, that I have seen many times at the Freer Gallery of Art in D.C. I like art in general, though I’m woefully ignorant of most of it, and my appreciation of it is limited to “I know what I like and I like that.” What I have always liked about pottery – apart from the fact that it can be beautiful as well as functional – is that it doesn’t simply sit on your shelf or hang on your wall (though it can do those things); it’s something tangible, with weight and dimension; it’s something you can take down and grasp and hold. Something you can feel. Every piece is different, and yet every piece is some combination of the same basic elements, earth, water, and fire.

Despite my total lack of artistic talent, I’ve always wanted to take a pottery class. It was on my ever-growing list of Things to Do…Someday. Sometime last year, after I began staying home with Abby and found myself, for the first time in my adult life, without a “real job,” the thought occurred to me one day that maybe the time was right for me to take a beginner’s class. I called the local pottery studio and paid my fee and even bought some of the tools I’d need, but what with one thing and another it never worked out to actually enroll in a class until this summer.

This morning was my first class. Dan and Abby came downtown with me, and before they dropped me off we all had a delightful breakfast at a little French cafe and bakery. Abigail ate the world’s blueberriest muffin, much to her delight and stickiness, and Dan and I had egg and gruyere sandwiches and split half a dozen beignets. They were amazing – so light and delicious, topped with two kinds of sugar. I think they were actually better than the beignets we had at Cafe du Monde a couple of years ago (I know, heresy! Insert gasp here!), though the coffee in New Orleans is exponentially better than anything you can get in the Triangle. 

The pottery class was scheduled to last for three hours. Dan and Abby dropped me off in front, a few minutes early (I like to be early for things. I think I was early to every class in college; I would actually set my watch five minutes ahead, and then show up five minutes before that. Anyway, you guys, old habits die hard. And it totally paid off in this case because I was able to claim a nice shelf for myself. I am what Hopkins people would call a pottery class throat). Everyone, as it turned out, showed up before the teacher, who was running a bit late. One guy brought Krispy Kremes, which of course I couldn’t manage to eat since I was still stuffed full of beignets.

Turns out our class is a mixed level class; there’s only one other person who is brand-new to clay besides me, and everyone else has taken at least one beginner’s class. I think their enrollment was a bit short for the beginner’s class, so they made it mixed level. It meant that the other beginner, Tina, and I got a lot of help from Pam, the instructor.

Of course, when I say “help,” I mean “direction,” and when I say “direction,” I mean “a shitload of information delivered in the tone usually reserved for high school driving instructors.” Seriously, Pam made me so nervous, especially in the first hour or so, that I kept jumping whenever she wandered over to my workspace and said something about my technique. Then she would tell me I had just taken my hands off the clay too quickly, which was why it was messed up, and I would be like “DUH, it’s because you made me NERVOUS and I JUMPED.”

Tina and I exchanged a lot of Looks. Embarrassed, alarmed, nervous, guilty Looks. It took me back to my Catholic school days.

Pam is very brusque, which I guess I am fine with (I don’t think of myself as a shrinking violet), but it’s a bit overwhelming when you are trying to learn something new. Whenever I did something not quite right – which is, let’s face it, kind of implied by the whole “beginner” label, and the fact that I had never touched raw clay until today – more often than not, she said something in the tone your driving instructor used to employ when you had done something particularly stupid in “the flow of traffic,” and even though there was never any real danger, because, of course, he or she had just made use of the handy brake at his or her feet, you really ought to keep in mind that in most other cars there would be no passenger-side break and no experienced and alert driving instructor, which means that you – and everyone in the car with you – would most likely be dead.

But Pam also knew how to be encouraging at times. She used my wheel to demonstrate the first throw, so I didn’t get to try throwing or centering myself until my first lump of clay had already become a funny-looking bowl. But when I threw my second lump of clay, I managed to center it myself – pushing down and out – trying to apply equal pressure with both hands. Suddenly, my wet lump of clay was no longer wobbling about on the spinning wheel – it was the still point at its center. And Pam, walking by at the time, looked at me seriously and said, “look at you! And you thought you didn’t know what you were doing!”

Alright, it’s not exactly the kind of praise I got used to when I had the world’s best kindergarten teacher. But I guess I’ll take it.

Over the course of the class I managed to throw, center, shape, and cut three funny-looking bowls (though one of them, the one I spent the most time on, is actually not bad-looking at all, even if it is too small to be very useful). I also managed to spatter the bottom of my pants, the front of a borrowed apron, my wheel and table, and the wall behind it with lots and lots of reddish-brown, clay-stained water. (Cleanup took awhile, and my hands still feel dry and grainy.)

Pottery is like nothing I’ve ever done before. I had forgotten how hard it is to learn something that can’t be read or heard or memorized or learned through conventional study. Even ballroom dancing, when Dan and I took classes before Abby was born, was somewhat easier than this, because I already had some understanding of music and rhythm. With clay, Pam can tell me over and over what I need to do, what I should look for and how it should feel, the way I should brace my feet or hold my hands or lean with my body over the wheel – but I cannot learn simply by listening to her words, no matter how often (or how firmly) she says them. All I can do is pick up the clay and push it around, and try not to be afraid of it. Remember, thou art dust.

Honestly, I did not think I would be able to center that second ball of clay today. I was starting to think that I was just exposing myself to embarrassment and failure by signing up for this class – me, total non-artist that I am – and I was remembering just how much I hate not getting things quickly, and how I often avoid doing things I’m not good at, even though I know that makes me a tool. My lump of clay was wobbling to and fro, even my hair was slipping out of my ponytail, and I felt sweaty and disheveled and frustrated.

But if I couldn’t center the clay, then I couldn’t even start anything new, not even a second funny-looking bowl. I couldn’t learn if I couldn’t start. Which meant I had to learn to center, today, or that was pretty much it for my pottery experiment.

I closed my eyes. I didn’t have to be able to see, after all; I had to be able to feel. I pushed, down and out. Hard. I stopped worrying that I would wreck my clay, make a huge mess, or hurt my back bending over the wheel. I felt the slight burn of the wheel’s metal surface through the layer of clay on my hands. It hurt a little, but I kept pushing.

I opened my eyes. The wheel was still spinning along, but my clay was no longer rocking and rolling to and fro. It was steady in the middle, smooth and suddenly appealing, awaiting my direction.

“You’re centered,” one of my classmates said earnestly.

For just a second, I really did feel it.