The Potter's Hand

Hands

Clay must feel happy in the good potter's hand. - Janet Fitch

Have you ever smelled wet dirt and loved it because it had the smell of roses?

Have you ever heard it dancing?

I have.

In a poterie in Avanos, Turkey during a trip.

Our guide had asked us to write about our experience, a specific person assigned to each day of the tour. My turn came on the sixth day when we visited Avanos which is set on the banks of the Kızılırmak Red River. 

The town is noted for its carpet-weaving and tapestry-making craft, but it is the pottery and ceramics  produced as far back as around 2,000 BC that it is most famous for. The Red River, which also happens to be one of the country’s longest rivers, has supplied many generations of craftsmen with the red clay used to create their iconic art. 

This was what I wrote.

*******

Day 6, May 1997

At Avanos, in an unassuming poterie, we watched the creative process unfold in its most undiluted form - quietly, but masterfully. 

Seated inside his rock-carved workshop, Galip presided over a lump of clay.

There was almost a reverent hush in the room punctuated only by the whirring of a foot-rotated wheel as the master craftsman and potter honed, shaped, refined, and turned out a properly proportioned covered teapot, capped by a perfectly fitted lid.

He breathed life into his creation with a puff into the teapot's spout. As its lid came off, he pronounced that it was good. Grinning widely, he additionally quipped, See, eet eez not difficult.

Then cupping in his hands a moistened clod of earth from the Red River, he invited us to listen to the sound of the earth.

******* 

I remember how he trailed off, feeling like he was on the cusp of something. But I was clueless.

All I was thinking about at that time was the movie Ghost. Does Patrick Swayze now go up behind people in pottery classes and hug them just to crack up other ghosts?

My pathetically trivial thoughts aside, I did know.

The Avanos potter had just held earth in his hands.

And he made it dance.

Healing Hands

Hands 

Particularly at a time of anxiety waiting for the result of my MRI (normal result, BTW, I was told a couple of days ago), I thought about my Dad whom I fondly remember on this Father's Day.

Sometimes Daddy is the only medicine that works... - Anonymous

I don't remember Mum giving us bubble gum-flavored chewable tablets for colds and fever.

I have a cold. It's snot funny.

She did put Vicks in each nostril and on our back, a washcloth dipped in water on our forehead, and pampered us with a cup of warm arroz caldo and the biggest slice of watermelon for dessert. We were also allowed to read the komiks in bed for as long as we wanted to.

But the best thing she did to soothe our childhood aches and pains? 

She always said, Wait for Dadee. He'd know what to do to make you well again.

We knew that he knew.

As soon as I'd hear him coming in from work, I'd put down my comic book, close my eyes and lay as still as I could. I might even pretend a cough or two.

From the doorway, I could hear Mum giving him a report. I'd open an eye and see him hesitating for only a moment, then giving a slow nod. He would shake his head, then give a slight smile.

Looking me over the steeple of his fingers, he'd ask with the utmost concern in his voice. Sinong may sakit? Who's sick? 

As he sat by my bedside, he'd ask calmly. Dito ba? Is this where the fever is?

As I nodded, he'd cock his head to one side, as if he were making a very important decision about something. Then he'd bend down and gently massage my forehead with both hands. He would start from the center and ease down his hands on the sides and out my temples.

He would repeat the movement, asking each time in a soothing voice if I could feel the fever going down and out of me. I'd nod and he'd repeat the words quietly, Is it going away?

Lifting my face to the ceiling as if it were a sky full of stars, I'd look at him with a broad grin and say, Dadee, it is.

With that answer, he'd look at me, one eyebrow slightly raised. I could see crinkles at the corner of his eyes that let me know that everything would be alright.

Laughing with an easy chuckle, he'd summon me, Go to sleep already. 

There was probably no logic to all this, but did I care?

That night, drops of healing balm touched me. 

I knew it as sure as the sun would rise in the east.

Dadee was the only medicine that worked.

 

A Momentous Christening

From The Archives

I wanted to tickle his feet. 

They were too chubby to fit in shoes, so he went barefoot at his baptism. I remember  laughing so hard when we tried to squeeze his feet into shoes.

Our First Grandson.

Stylish in a blue Hawaiian shirt that matched his Dad's. 

On his baptismal day, I was asked to give the words of blessing. This was what I said.

*************************

THE BESTEST OF ALL BEST

Words of Blessing

Harris United Methodist Church - June 13, 2010

Family milestones have a way of bringing me down on my knees. 

One of them happened on our anniversary last year. We were doing a conference call with Alena, during which she proudly declared, You are going to be grandparents.

Finally - after wanting to be grandparents, burning candles to our Lady of Impossible Conception (and we were not even Catholic)!

The prophet Isaiah's words came to mind. Those who hope on the Lord will renew their strength; they will soar on wings like eagles. (Isaiah 40:31).

That was our best anniversary gift ever.

Exciting milestones followed soon after. 

There was the sonogram of a fourth-inch blob resembling a gummi worm that was to be our grandchild. We deemed it The Best Photograph Ever, worthy of publication in the National Geographic.

We knew that the most reliable method to determine the baby's sex was childbirth, but Alena's obstetrician had declared on the baby's 16th week of development that it was to be a boy. That was a milestone.

Thru the ensuing months, the entire family - Vicente and I, and our younger daughter Iris - surrounded the expectant parents and the baby with prayers. We waited upon the Lord in trust, hopeful that this life growing in the womb, from the size of a grape to a giant watermelon, would prosper under God's grace and become strong.

Childbirth is like a vampire - it never strikes before sundown. So it was that labor pains began around midnight on December 7th, when all obstetricians in the state were still in deepest sleep. In TV dramas, childbirth takes about as long as an episode of Gray's Anatomy, but this one took about as long as a public television station's fund-raising marathon.

Then, IT happened. Midday, the very first grandchild in our family was born - the bestest milestone of all.

We all peered in awe at the bundle in Patrick's arms - and saw all of God's grace in one small, pink, crumpled face.

We had prayed for a miracle. Then God sent Reis. Christmas came early.

James 1:17 says: Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the father of the heavenly lights. Baby Reis was a good, perfect, and our best Christmas gift ever.

Today, we invite you to join us in the mighty chorus of joyful music, leading us sunward, in celebration of yet another milestone - the baby's dedication to become part of the body of believers in Christ.

From the Hughes family calendar, 2011

Our fervent prayer is for this child to be raised up on eagle's wings, secure in the palm of God's hand - that his dreams may take him to the corners of his smiles, to the highest of his hopes, and to the most special places his heart will ever know.

Friends in faith, may I present the parents - our children Alena and Patrick - and our grandson, REIS DENTON HUGHES.

###

Always, our prayers and fair hopes for you

 as you grow up,

our dear First Grandson!

This Is Now. Curly-haired First Grandson at 12 years. Today is his first day of Aerospace summer school.

Happy Talk

Hands

There is nothing more beautiful than a vulnerable heart in open hands. -  Amanda Mosher

She had him at Happy talk.

But more than that, her hands. They mesmerize. 

Fans of the 1957 movie musical South Pacific will well remember Bloody Mary's enchanting and innocent Tonkinese daughter Liat. In a memorable scene in the plunge pool below a water's steep fall, she transcends the barriers of language as she mimics with hand gestures the words of her mother's song about having a happy life.

Happy talk, keep talking happy talk,

Talk about things you'd like to do.

Everything starts with a dream.

Lieutelan Cable is gazing at her, his eyes liquid and softened, his face kind.

You gotta have a dream, if you don't have a dream,

How you gonna have a dream come true?

She looks at him with puppy-dog eyes. They play a dance of glances, of secret significant smiles.

Her hands are miracles as she talks about a moon floating in de sky looking like a lily on a lake.

... About a bird learning how to fly

Making all the music he can make.

The way her fingers move feels so natural and right. As if they hold memories of a thousand other lifetimes. 

Her eyes dance with humor, so gold in the sunshine, making him want to touch her. Her hair, her skin. To hold the hand inside him.

I'm spellbound.

Two conspiring lovers, contriving in their mirth.

Vibrant.

Dreamers in an endless universe.

Erupting in some joint  emotion, blinking into the sunlight. A girl saying to de boy: 'You an' me is lucky to be us!'

Behold the hands.

How they promise, supplicate, beckon.

How they can talk happy and have a dream come true.

He's Got The Whole World

Hands 

A reflection on the May 24, 2022 shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas that killed nineteen children and two teachers

Besides Jesus Loves Me and Deep and Wide, it was one of the first songs I learned in Sunday School.

He's Got the Whole World.

The first time I heard its title, I remember how my eyes widened, then narrowed, at the thought. Really? God must have pretty large hands. 

As we sang, Deaconess Afrie would instruct us, Make a big circle with both arms, then cup your hands in front of you as though you were holding the world. 

She continued. Now for wind, wave your hands back and forth like they are blowing. For rain, put both hands high in the air and wiggle your fingers as you bring them down to indicate rain.

I was chuckling, How fun! He's got the wind and the rain in his hands and I do, too.

Then more characters came in.  

He's got the gamblin' man in his hands. He's got the lion man in his hands. He's got the crapshoot man in his hands.

This was large, but I was comforted. They were all safe in his hands.

He's got the little bits of baby in his hands.

Aww, even spoiled Youngest Brother?

He's got you and me brother in his hands. He's got you and me sister in his hands.  

It was the kind of thought I replayed in my mind in the weeks that came and filed with hundreds like it, magnifying its significance. I had clung on to its comfort even as I grew up and was raised in church.

Learning stories and parables by heart.

And reciting the story of  Noah and the flood and Jonah and the whale and Jesus feeding the 5,000.

And earning the title of First in Bible drill, someone who knew where to find Malachi. 

But even as I had all the Christian boxes checked off, I came to realize how things and ideas get very small after a while if you stick around long enough.

I miss the days when the whole world could be covered with love by a God who was so big. 

When He's got all of us here in his hands.

When my God was a giant.