Playing with mud

is something I have not done for years. Perhaps it would be soothing right now.

I went to a funeral yesterday and was left wondering yet again at the way some people outlive so many of their family and their friends. My paternal grandfather once told me something about this. "I have lived too long. All my friends have gone."

Another friend, a migrant to this country, once told me, " I have nobody left to whom I can say 'remember when' ". She was speaking about her childhood.

It is perhaps why it was important for someone else I knew to return to Holland in her old age. She did not have Alzheimer's but there were moments of loss and confusion brought on by grief. It is so much more difficult when you have needed to change your language as well. Another Dutch friend, who spoke excellent English but always spoke Dutch with her husband, would also use Dutch with me. She did not do this with everyone but I had known her almost all my life. I had stayed with them occasionally and they treated me as they treated their own children. They spoke to us in Dutch even while we answered them in English. (That I usually understood was more to do with the situation than any real understanding of the language!)

M... had another sort of language. She was ninety-nine and ten months when she died. She did not quite reach the century.  That would have infuriated her. I think she was frustrated towards the end of her life. She had always been a very busy person, busy in her garden, busy making scones in her kitchen, busy making a quilt for someone. Years ago now she taught me how to do a rarely used cast on in knitting. "Of course I'll show you. It's very useful." Yes it has been useful. 

I would sometimes pass her home on my way to and from another destination. If the bright yellow car was there I would stop for a moment. She would always have something to show, almost always something for someone else.

And there were the pots she had once made. For her they had been a form of art therapy. She had lost her first love. Like so many he did not come back from "the war". He was an airman. It took her several years to find another love, this time a returned sailor. In between she had held down jobs and begun to learn to, as she once put it to me, "play with mud". She told me it calmed her. It was a physical pleasure to feel the clay under her fingers. I have watched potters at work on many occasions and tried to imagine the sensation of bring a lump of "dirt" to life. I love the idea of being able to start over again if something goes wrong in the early stages of creation. Not all crafts allow for that!

My uncle, also a potter, thought highly of M's work. No, she was not a professional. She did not mix with professional potters the way he did but he knew there was "something" there in her work that he could relate to or needed. I suspect it was that need to play with mud.