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The Losing of Things

At least once a year (though usually many more times), the twins and I went to the local paint-your-own-pottery place and made a plate. I split the plate in half, and they would each paint one side of the plate. And then I would write the year at the bottom, the store would fire the plate, and we’d pick it up the next week. We did it every spring, and the idea was that we’d use the plates for dessert at their graduation dinner. People could share stories about them from the year on their plate.

The store sent out an email last week that they were closing. While it wasn’t stated outright, the assumption is that it’s another casualty of the virus, like so many restaurants and businesses. People haven’t been able to go in and paint pottery in five months. There is only so long that a store can pay their rent without having any customers.

The email came into my inbox right before bed, and I felt unreasonably sad. I put the emphasis on that word because it’s not my store. It’s not my livelihood. There are other places (hopefully) to paint pottery, and we’ll go to them. Or we won’t, and we’ll just be happy with the plates we have. Or we’ll make a few plates out of paper and display them on the table. I have options. The point is that the owner’s life changed. Their way of supporting their family changed. THEY have a right to be sad. I don’t have a right to be sad.

I curled up in bed, thinking about how we brought the twins to the store when they were four months old to paint the bottoms of their feet and press them to plates. How we stripped them down to their diapers once they could sit up on their own, and how the Wolvog would dip the brush and then immediately swipe it across his face, chest, and legs before we could wrestle the brush away. I thought about all the years of photos I have of them painting plates and cups and even tiny pet dishes to welcome Truman to the family. And I wanted to cry. I am crying now, writing this. I kept the email in my inbox so I would keep seeing it and thinking about it. It’s a digital scab I keep picking at, all the while feeling like I have no right to be anything more than disappointed.

But I’m not just disappointed. I’m sad. My brain can’t wrap itself around the enormous number of ill and dead, but I can mourn the tiny losses; the stores and restaurants. The people who move away. The events missed. The shows unseen.

I am sad because it was in our power to squash this virus, and we didn’t.

12 comments

1 Jen { 08.05.20 at 8:13 am }

This beautifully describes your sadness about what you have lost. Now and for the future. Anticipation of the twins’ graduation dinner being a certain way and that expectation being embedded in all the plates you already have.

What you’ve written does show your sorrow is different to the loss the store owners are facing but it is still valid. And compounded by all the other sadnesses of this time, both big and small. Hugs to you all.

2 Journeywoman { 08.05.20 at 8:31 am }

You should send this to the store owner so they know how they have been such a part of your lives.

I totally understand. So many traditions are upended due to this. And it was avoidable.

3 KatherineA { 08.05.20 at 8:48 am }

I really, really get what you’re saying here – that this is one of the stand-ins for a much, much bigger loss. For memories that are sweet and also sad because they’re memories. That as a country the virus has been allowed to run rampant in a way that has destroyed lives both in the terrible, acute loss of actual lives as well as the more insidious losses of the ways people made their lives and livelihoods.

The one thing that kind of piques here though…having perspective *is* valuable and necessary in these situations. Certainly, the loss of the shop owner is enormous and life-changing and in no way should be minimized. In terms of the concrete, finite resources, aid and such should absolutely flow toward the shop owner. They’re the epicenter of this crisis and loss, the innermost circle in the “ring theory”/”dump out” way of considering crises. But that doesn’t mean you don’t have the right to feel the sadness and loss or that you’re not somewhere in those other rings that surround the center. It makes sense that it’s a loss to you and all the people who made those kinds of memories there.

I’m sorry for the shop owner’s loss. And I’m sorry for yours as well.

4 a { 08.05.20 at 11:14 am }

What KatherineA said – I don’t think you can be unreasonably sad about this. Sure, it’s not an end to *your* livelihood, and it’s very sad for the owners. But it is certainly an end to your intended tradition (at least for the foreseeable future – who knows if this kind of business can resume?) and traditions are of utmost importance to you. The sadness may not last as long for you as it does for the proprietor, but the pain is real.

Also…Pain Olympics? Trying to lose is almost as bad as trying to win. You’re denying the impact of your feelings because you think they’re not valid enough. I’ve been sad to see several local places *that I’ve NEVER PATRONIZED* close, because it’s a stand-in for my sadness over everything. Conversely, it makes me hopeful to see some still holding on, when I thought they’d be the first to go.

5 Noemi { 08.05.20 at 4:25 pm }

I think sometimes we’re “unreasonably” sad about some things because they hit us a certain way and allow us to do some backlogged grieving that we’ve been saving up. There are little losses every day, and we learn to push through them, but sometimes a loss hits us in just the right way and it punctures the other grief and we feel all of it. And then we wonder how “this one little thing” made us so, so sad. At least that is what I tell myself, because it helps me accept those moments where the wave of sadness seems much bigger than it ought to be.

6 Mali { 08.06.20 at 12:42 am }

Yes, what Noemi said. When you’re experiencing loss upon loss, which is what you’re living right now, it’s not surprising that some things have made you feel sadder than you might otherwise have expected. Even this – if the store had closed in “normal times” you would have been sad, but you could have easily found another one to do the plates. But COVID-19 has robbed you of that too.

7 Jess { 08.06.20 at 8:00 am }

I think you are reasonably sad, for sure. It’s not your business, but this is a powerful symbol of traditions interrupted, of a permanent gap in normalcy. I’m so sorry for this loss, because it is a loss. Agreeing with everyone else that you deserve to going this grief, this cumulation of losses big and small (including the thought of what a graduation party might even look like now AND the milestones grief associated with children becoming more adult-like). Sending you a massive hug.

8 Phoenix { 08.06.20 at 2:14 pm }

I feel this post and I find a bit of comfort in everyone’s comments. I worked at a paint-your-own pottery place after college and it was so fun to make plates with babies’ footprints and to see generations of women come in together to create family pieces for the table and/or holidays. A store like this is a special place and I am sorry yours is closing. The losses we are experiencing are so insurmountable altogether, but we can feel each individual thing acutely.

9 Justine Levine { 08.09.20 at 8:51 am }

When this all started, I was actually kind of angry at people who were outraged because their special thing (whatever it was) had been taken away. I was working with students who, on the one hand, wanted graduation back, and on the other, who were caring for parents who were really ill, and they worried they might die. It felt like the first group were completely tone deaf.

But as I’ve continued to work through this over the past few months, I’ve come to accept that there are many kinds of losses and traumas, and we are where we are … everything lost is part of a puzzle, part of the plans we make that can no longer be fulfilled (those of us on your blogroll know a little something about that), part of the ways we imagine ourselves into being. I think your dishes are part of that.

10 Midle Girl { 08.09.20 at 3:24 pm }

Exactly.

((Hugs))

11 Lori Lavender Luz { 08.15.20 at 5:24 pm }

It’s no wonder you are sad. The loss involves both your past and present regarding your highest value, your family/children. I’m so sorry, both for you all and for the pottery store owner.

12 loribeth { 08.17.20 at 8:07 pm }

It all makes perfect sense to me. I’m sorry, Mel. (((hugs)))

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