Holiday Ceramics!

When I met Rocketman the summer of 1979, his mother was into ceramics. I had never seen anything like it and I fell in love with the craft. She was really talented at ceramics although she would scoff if you would tell her so and I did often. She took classes throughout the 80's and then the popularity waned and that was the end of it. I was always thrilled when she made me something and I have quite a few Christmas ornaments and decorations that she made. I put up my decorations this weekend and decorated our tree and the house with the ceramics she gifted me through the years.

 

I couldn't get enough of ceramics so I took classes in the late 80's with a girlfriend from work. We would have class once a week in the basement of this chain-smoking gruff lady. She was a hoot and we had a lot of fun. Here are a few things that I made.

Darlene, my ceramic teacher, would paint the eyes for a buck a pair. She was so good that I always had her do that for me.

She would also tell us what colors to use which I really appreciated. Now you would think that my mother-in-law's house would be full of ceramics and indeed it was. We were there during what happened to be one of her final weeks and she took me into one of the extra bedrooms and opened the closet to show me the shelves stuffed full of ceramics.

She knew how much I loved them and told me to take whatever I wanted because she didn't need it anymore. I declined because I thought it was just so sad and I regret doing that. Fast forward to this year and I finally got up my nerve to ask my father-in-law for a piece or two of her ceramics. Everything was gone! Not one piece was left and he said he has no idea what happened to all the ceramics. I was shocked and bummed but it just makes the pieces I do have all the more valuable to me.

Someday I will share the story of me and my mother-in-law. It was a complex relationship to say the least and only at the very end did we truly become friends in every sense of the word.