5.27

Feeling pretty accomplished today. Woke up at a decent adult time for a day off. Got the oil changed in my car. Did my laundry and was done with it by 2:00 PM. Reorganized my main email inbox (because it massively needed it). Cleaned the tub. Vacuumed. Did the dishes.

I was feeling great, you know, realizing how sick I had been when I didn't even know it, and now, six days after finishing the antibiotics, I have so much energy now.

And then the dishes slid into the sink.

"Oh I hope nothing broke," I said to no one but myself because I live alone, and started to pull the drainer off the dishes.

Only one thing was broken. Just one.

It's a plate I made was working at Wakonda. I can't replace it, you know. Not unless I find some place where I can do ceramics and even then it wouldn't be the same. (It's like when my baby brother was super little and pulled down the Christmas tree as if he were a cat and the only thing that got broken was my very first Christmas ornament, the one they got me when I was still the only child rather than the oldest child. My parents got me an ornament to replace it, but it wasn't at all the same. And all my ornaments are still in the box in the closet in my parents' apartment.) And it's okay that it's different; plates are plates, regardless of how I got them. Plates can be replaced because they're, ultimately, plates. (That's what I tell myself anyway. The only things that got busted in the car crash were two cups, and one of them was also a Wakonda-original, in fact the very first thing I made during my job at Wakonda.)

But the experience wouldn't be the same, either. I don't know if I'll ever again get to be elbow-deep in liquid clay, or pouring molds, or cleaning greenware, or glazing bisque, or standing precariously on a stepstool to reach into a kiln because my short self can't reach the bottom without help.

And so all that flashed (some of it unconsciously, I'm sure) through my mind and I burst into tears.

Tears over a broken plate.

More like, tears over the inevitability of time moving forward. I can't stop it and I can't control it but sometimes I really really wish I could.

Probably should figure out why I think that way.