I had to learn to speak French.

I had to learn to speak French.  The classes that were offered to us by my husband's company were mostly for the benefit of our daughter who would be entering the local school and they ended for me not long after she started attending that school.  I was a very introverted shy person who was mortified to appear stupid or make mistakes with the language, so I seldom spoke if I could help it.  Going to the post office was torture.  Yes, people who work in Post Offices are pretty much the same around the world - not very friendly!  It didn't help that people would tell our daughter - in front of me - that, "Your mother will have a terrible time with the language here, poor thing."

 
I did have a sort of friend - well, I liked her a lot, but we couldn't communicate very effectively.  In fact, I came to realize that most of the friends that I made in France were people who really loved to talk to someone who liked or at least had no choice but to listen to them.  One day this friend invited me over to her house for the afternoon.  I was making every attempt that I could to make conversation.  That somehow led us to talking about childrens' books, whereupon she told me about the wonderful French children's book called "Little Women."  I tried to dispute the provenance of the author going into a very convoluted history of Lousia May Alcott and her family, and explaining that they were Transendentalists.  (Don't even ask why someone who could barely say anything in French decided to talk about Philosophy).  "You mean they did Yoga?"  she asked.

That's when we had to change the subject.  She started to tell me that she had been taking a pottery class at the local Community Center.  I became pretty excited about that, since I had been thinking hard about trying to work with clay again.  It would also be a way for me to be forced to have to interact with a variety of people and hopefully learn the language better.  I asked her for more information, and she made a call to inquire about what steps I would have to take to enroll myself in those classes.  She never mentioned - until later - why she chose to drop out of the class.  Basically she told me that I just had to go to the classroom on a Monday and speak with the instructor to begin the adventure.  That seemed fine and even exciting at the time.

Three days later when Monday rolled around and it was 1:30 and lunch, or dinner in France,  was over, and I was sitting in the parking lot in our car, I no longer felt excitement.  I was sitting there full of dread and fear, and there was no way I was going to be able to go into that building and confront my language demons.  But, I reasoned with myself, I was an adult person who should be able to do this.   With a deep breath and steely resolve, I opened the car door, and walked into the Community Center, and managed to find the clay studio - I can't even remember how.  Unfortunately for me, although later it turned out to be fortunate, I entered the classroom at the same time as a young French man, who was also trying to begin taking classes there.  We were introduced to the instructor, a handsome older woman with grey eyes and hair to match, who welcomed us and asked us for any experiences we may have had with clay and what our goals were.  The young man, who could speak perfect French, of course, began saying something about his  never having worked with clay before, but that he had many ideas for projects, and had been thinking about them for a long time, and was so excited to be able to finally realize them.  He even went into a lengthy description of what he hoped to accomplish.  Apparently that was the wrong thing to do.  The instructor was no longer smiling, and began telling him in no uncertain terms that he was a beginner, and that he had to behave like one.  There was to be no talk of ideas until he learned at least a modicum of what it means to work with clay.  (Bear in mind, she later told us that she took a workshop where she spent 2 weeks making perfect round balls of clay like the ones that one would throw on the pottery wheel, but they didn't.)  I felt very badly for that young man, who seemed so worthy of classes - so full of enthousiasm, so full of great ideas.  At least it seemed so, I really didn't understand exactly what he was saying.  I felt badly, but not so much so that when he left, I didn't immediately figure out what he did wrong, and corrected what would be my own responses to her questions.  Well, I didn't really have to correct very much, but I did make sure to act innocent and site the lack of any experience at all.  She was very happy with me, and couldn't stop talking about that young upstart, and what was he thinking coming into her class acting like he knew something.  I smiled and nodded.  "But," she told me, "we don't start with wheel-throwing until after a year of handbuilding to get the feel of clay."  Oh god, that meant that I had to come back on Tuesday to the handbuilding class and start all over!  What if the handbuilding teacher was as mean as the wheel-throwing instructor!  "Just come back tomorrow," she said relieved, probably because she wouldn't have to deal with any new students at all that afternoon.

Ok, so the next day, after dinner again - or lunch if you are American - I was again sitting in our car in the parking lot of the Community Center trying to get the courage to start all over again.  French people are probably all mean, I reasoned.  Look at the Post Office people, look at the wheel-throwing teacher.  I just didn't think I could go through this again.  What if that nice young man tried to get into this class too?  Again, I had to take a deep breath, get out of the car and back into that clay studio.  This time, it was different.  The instructor was a small, thin, dark-haired woman with a pleasant face and manner.  She welcomed me into the class, introduced me to all the other students who were themselves very welcoming, and gave me a lump of clay and told me to have fun with it.  What a relief!  Well, I didn't know what to do with the clay, and ended up making another one of those 'bowl somethings' which I still have as a souvenir, but at least I knew that I could keep coming back and even enjoy myself.  I settled in over the next few weeks, became more comfortable there, and slowly became obsessed with all things pottery.  I was even honored much later when those same people in my Tuesday class told me that I was 'their American', and while they didn't know about other Americans, they would keep me.

Weeks later, the friend who initially told me about the pottery classes confessed that she dropped out because of that wheel-throwing instructor.  She was too difficult to get along with.  Well, my friend could have told me as a warning, but at least it meant that it wasn't just me, or that she hated all Americans.  She was, maybe to her credit, the same to everyone.         

Unlike so many potters, my first experiences with clay were not happy ones.

Unlike so many potters, my first experiences with clay were not happy ones.  I've often read of the almost epiphanous and life-altering moment when a potter first encounters the clay medium.  I had that experience, but it was when I first walked into the Printmaking studio of the University where I was working for a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.  The smell of the chemicals and the warm look of a freshly inked copper plate took my breath away.  I never wanted to leave.  I only later took a pottery class as an elective and as a curiosity.  My wide-eyed roommate was taking pottery classes, and was creating wonderful full-blown pots finished in subtle shades of lilac and softest blue, almost from the first moment she sat at the wheel.  How hard could it be?  Very hard, I was to find out.  I spent hours and hours at that wheel until the skin was scraped from the sides of my hands and they were bloody only to end up with a brown lumpy sort of"bowl something"... or something.  It didn't help that our teacher's critiques consisted of his holding up one of our pots, saying it was bad, and then opening his fingers to let it drop to the floor where it shattered back to it's original raw clay state.  I decided that I was not a potter, and dropped the class.  The best compliment that I was probably ever given was by that exacting taskmaster teacher when he found out that I was leaving the class.  "It's too bad that you're dropping out," he remarked, "I think you might possibly have a good sense of form.....but, oh well."  He shrugged and walked away.  I left with a slight sense of regret, but went happily back to what I considered home - the studio where I could draw and make lithographs and etchings. 

It was only years later, while living in France that I could revisit the possibilities of clay.  Somewhere along the way I came to realize the limitations for me of working in two-dimensions.  I needed to be making something that took up space.  I seemed to need the structure of the vessel for it's possibilities of form, the shape of space that it could envelope and the outside blank expanse for surface decoration.  There was also the as-yet undefined connection I began to feel with those before me who also made fine things with their hands, probably stemming from growing up around hardworking farm women whose only outlet for their abundant creativity were the domestic arts, and the excitement they displayed when they proudly showed each other their fine embroidery, crochet, needlework and quilts. 

So it was that I began my long-postponed and difficult journey with clay.