The Apron Thing (And Other Things I Did Not Anticipate)

First Wednesday of January. I drove to the community center in the dark because six o'clock is basically night now, found parking without any drama, and walked through the front door feeling cautiously prepared. I had signed up. I had shown up. I had even left early enough to not be rushing. All of this felt like proof that I was, in some baseline way, a competent adult.

I was not wearing an apron. Everyone else was wearing an apron. Not a matching set, not like they'd coordinated, just each person had their own, pulled from a bag or a tote, loop already over their neck before they even sat down. There was a woman in her fifties with a canvas apron that had clearly survived ten years of use. There was a guy about my age with a paint-spattered one from what I can only assume was a previous creative era of his life. There was a teenager, I think? maybe twenty? in a full denim apron like she'd been pottering since childhood and simply had the equipment for it. And then there was me, in my good jeans, holding nothing, realizing too late that this was information someone could have put in the class description.

The exact moment I realized everyone else had an apron.

The instructor, whose name is Pat, which I find deeply reassuring in a way I can't entirely explain, handed me a spare apron from a hook by the sink without making it a thing. It smelled like old clay and someone else's hard work, and I put it on and felt immediately more legitimate. Then she put a lump of gray clay in front of me and said, more or less, that the goal for tonight was just to get our hands on it and see what happened. Which: fine. Manageable. Except that the clay is heavier than it looks and more resistant than I expected and I spent most of the class making what was essentially an ashtray with ambitions.

Studying the clay like it was going to explain itself.

I drove home with clay under my fingernails and the specific kind of tired that comes from using muscles you forgot you had, in my hands, which I did not know could be tired. I registered for this class at the end of November, spent all of December talking myself out of dreading it, and the first thing I can tell you is that I should have brought an apron and I will absolutely be back next Wednesday. That's the update. That's the whole update.