I wish I could claim something other than the disaster that was 2016 as the catalyst for my taking an art class last month.
I’d spent the prior year scoping out Townsend Atelier, located across the street from the Times Free Press offices in the ArtsBuild building, daydreaming about what was being created inside before I even knew the studio’s proper name. I’d actually formulated a pretty full-bodied scenario of myself taking one of the pottery classes advertised in the window.*
I wouldn’t know what to do with a pottery wheel if my life depended on it. However, in my daydream, I immediately showed an unusual natural talent while simultaneously conjuring images of a PG-rated, Swayze- and murder-free version of the Demi Moore scene in “Ghost.”
But it was, in fact, the year from hell that finally got me through the door. Last year seemed to be “funky in a bad way” for a lot of folks, but it was particularly rough for my family and me. At the end of April, my mother was diagnosed with an unusually rare and relentless form of melanoma lodged in her sinus cavity. After just three months, my universally loved and respected, picture-of-health yoga instructor of a mother passed away in a hospice bed. I was absolutely devastated.
To make matters worse, another family crisis came to light at the same time, a situation that would have been fully challenging on its own, much less while being consumed by grief. For the next seven or eight months, I settled into my sadness, using work as a daytime escape while spending my free time alone with my dog, true crime TV and Frosted Mini-Wheats.