Clay Chronicles

It isn’t easy to find a hobby when you have a hard time remembering what fun feels like. 

When I try to remember fun, I always come back to this one memory from my childhood. 

My friend’s mom had a pottery wheel in their basement.  I always wanted to “play pottery” there, but my friend was less enchanted with it.  She must have let me get on the wheel at least once because while I don’t remember any details, I do remember the feeling…

Pure joy! 

These are the little gems we are supposed to chase in adulthood, right?

So… I signed up for a pottery class this summer.

On the first day, it was obvious that this was a multi-level class. 

Some students were brand new, and others put their earbuds in and got right to work pulling glorious pieces. 

“What are your hopes and goals for this class? What are you planning to make?” the teacher asked me.

“A full dinner set,” I said.

The entire room erupted in laughter!

I had no idea what was so funny, but I was about to find out.

It turns out that pottery is not as easy as it looks. 

Are you a free spirit?

A perfectionist?

A control freak?

Forget therapy. Pottery will reveal every part of your personality in the first 30 seconds. 

On the table.  On the wheel. On the floor.

The clay doesn’t want to play your mental games. 

It listens to your hands, and as a brand-new potter, my hands don’t know what in the heck they are doing! 

If I lean a hair width to the left, my pot wobbles and waves on the wheel. 

If I linger too long on a pull, my pot will have a too-thin spot in the middle and fall in on itself! 

And guess what?  Once it falls in, you can’t fix it.  That blob of clay must go back in your bag to rest and regain its proper consistency while you contemplate what a piece of crap potter you are. 

By you, I mean me.

There’s no forgiveness from the clay, so you must learn to forgive yourself.

Every step of pottery can potentially destroy your dreams, but once in a while, you will achieve something so exciting… so lovely that you are lured back into the studio.

After four weeks, I finally made a piece worth saving, and I put it in the kiln room to dry.

“Look!  I’ve actually got something!” I point to the shelf and my teacher looks up from her wheel. 

She is a lovely person.  She’s like a cowboy who has ridden the range for years and knows the lay of the land.  She’s seen many a doe-eyed potter’s dreams destroyed.  Yet she keeps showing up, leading a new class of fledglings every six weeks, giving us hope and a hefty dose of reality.

“Don’t get attached to it yet,” she says.

Her words hang in the air.

The other students’ heads nod up and down, hunched over their wheels, elbow-deep in clay.

They know that if your piece comes off the wheel looking like what you actually meant to make, and survives the next 4 steps of drying, firing, and glazing, you may end up with a gorgeous piece of art. 

But chances are, you won’t.

For years.

That’s why the mixed level classes are absolutely necessary.  So that you can watch more experienced potters make and take home glorious pieces, while you crouch over a wheel you’ve got spinning too fast or too slow.  And just when you think you’ve got it centered, your wad of clay launches off the wheel and goes shooting across the room.

My perfectionist brain sizzles in agony in the studio.  Imagine that. 

But something inside me is healing.  I started having fun, and I kept coming back.

It isn’t just me who is learning about myself here.  My best friend took the class with me. 

One day, our teacher told her, “Mary, you are letting the clay tell YOU what to do.  You have to tell THE CLAY what to do!  Impose your will on it!  Make it listen!”

I smiled. The teacher doesn’t know Mary like I do.    

She’s compromising, kind, accommodating, and selfless.  She has a hard time standing up for herself.

The clay knows this. 

It knows me too.

My perfectionism wants me to get on the wheel and in my first attempt make a cup that looks like I bought it at Target.  The clay laughs in my face. 

It teaches me to find beauty in imperfection.

Which I soon realize is the lesson I most need to learn in this life.

After eight weeks, I walked into the last class. 

I looked around the room and saw my fellow students quietly working.  Some on wheels, some building pieces by hand.

Suddenly, it was so clear. 

We are all a bunch of kids inside. 

Kids coming to play. 

Playing for the sake of play, nothing more. 

Brave souls, investing time and energy into an art form that has no guaranteed outcome. 

Hoping for the best.

Not dwelling on our failures. 

These are precious people to me now. 

Mr. Rogers unzips his sweater when he enters his studio, and we unzip who we are in the outside world and leave them at the door. 

We need what the pottery studio has to teach us… and stay bravely open to who we could become. 

Hoping for a masterpiece.