The Wheel Remembered Before I Did

Eleven years. That's the gap between the last time I sat at a pottery wheel and this morning. I registered for the Wednesday session in September, the community center brochure, same place I got the yoga schedule, same corkboard, and I did not think very much about it until I was walking into the studio and the smell of wet clay hit me like a physical thing. That particular combination of mineral and damp. I had forgotten that smell entirely and then I hadn't.

The instructor has the calm efficiency of someone who has watched a lot of people's first attempts collapse. She showed me how to center the clay, and my hands did what they thought they remembered, which was mostly wrong. The clay was patient about this in the way clay is patient, it just told the truth about where the pressure actually was. By the second attempt the column was less alarming. By the third something happened that I think was almost centering, and I favorite made a noise because the woman at the next wheel looked over and said, there it is. I didn't know what to say so I just nodded.

The wobble is load-bearing, apparently.

I came home with a small, lopsided bowl-shaped object wrapped in plastic. It's sitting on the kitchen table right now. I don't know if it will survive the bisque firing, the instructor was diplomatically noncommittal on this point, but I brought it home anyway. The collapsed bowl on the shelf above the stove has been there since 2011. It occurs to me that there is a pattern here that I did not plan.

Eleven years later. Still mine, apparently.

The cord is still on the windowsill. The prints are still leaning against the kitchen wall. And now there is this small uncertain thing on the table, which may or may not hold together, and either way I think I'm going back Wednesday.