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Welcome to Stuff I Learned Yesterday. My name is Barb Rankin, I’ve seen some interesting examples of early pottery while visiting museums in Greece and Italy, and I believe that if you aren’t learning, you aren’t living. In today’s episode of Stuff I Learned Yesterday I share a lesson about gifts that can last a lifetime.
Fun Fact:
In today’s fun fact, we’re going to talk about pottery, and this information comes to you from the Ancient History Encyclopedia.
Did you know that pottery was the first synthetic material ever created by humans. The term, pottery, refers to objects made of clay that have been fashioned into a desire shape, dried, and either fired or baked to fix their form. Due to its abundance and durability, pottery is one of the most common types of items found by archaeologists during excavations, and it has the potential of providing valuable information about the human past.
Since clay is abundant and cheap, it is the material of choice for making pottery.
The earliest recorded evidence of clay usage dates back to the Late Palaeolithic period in central and western Europe, where fired and unfired clay figurines were created as a form of artistic expression. As early as 30,000 years ago, we can also see evidence of some experimentation with clay: at a site known as Dolni Vestonice (Czech Republic), figurines made of clay mixed with crushed mammoth bone were found.
The oldest evidence of pottery manufacture has been found at an archaeological site known as Odai Yamamoto, in Japan, where fragments from a specific vessel have been dated to about 16,500-14,920 years ago. Non-agricultural Jomon peoples of Japan were producing clay pots used for food preparation that were elaborately decorated by about 13,000 years ago.
Wow – it sounds as if some of these old pottery pieces really were gifts that would last a lifetime – a few thousand lifetimes!
Pottery and ceramic classes are popular today for children and adults alike, and provide a fun and creative way to make gifts for family and friends.
What I Learned Yesterday:
If you Google “gifts that last a lifetime” or “gifts that last forever” recommendations for all types of products with an allegedly long life span pop up on your browser.
A gameboy. A Honda Accord. A Wahl beard trimmer. A Merrimack canoe. A Weiss field watch. An Adirondack chair.
And of course diamonds. Diamonds are forever, after all – so we’ve been told.
We’ve talked a lot about cleaning out “stuff” and organizing our “stuff” on “Stuff I Learned Yesterday.” (See what I did there!). Much of the “stuff” we receive during our life, the stuff that fills our homes and apartments, we have received as a gift. We often find it hard to part with a special memento, a gift from a cherished friend or relative, a reminder of what that person means or meant to us, and the love and caring that went into the gift they gave to us.
But at some point, we need to clear out the stuff because we are moving or downsizing, or our “stuff” has taken up too much space in our homes.
I’ve had to do this a number of times. I helped Mom clear out years of old gifts and other mementoes when she moved from Florida to Arizona 17 years ago, and then had to further downsize when she moved into a Memory Care facility two years ago. My brother passed away almost 9 years ago, and we had to box his things up and many of them were shipped to my home. A few years ago when I had the entire inside of my home painted during a one-week period, I realized I had too many possessions as I hurriedly schlepped items from one room to another just ahead of the painters, and then had to put them all back into place once the painters were finished.
Going through Mom’s old gifts and treasures was the hardest of all. As I went through one cabinet, I discovered that she had kept every single handmade card, every single old writing tablet, every single significant project that my brother and I had completed since we were in kindergarten.
I found red construction paper hearts attached to white doilies with “I love you, Mommy” written inside. There were pictures of what was meant to be our home, with our stick figure family holding hands, crayon scribbled blue skies, green grass, and the obligatory flowers, and perhaps the errant bunny rabbit sitting up in the grass with his big ears poised skyward.
I also found our summer projects. Almost every summer, we attended a week- long session at the Miami Museum of Science and Planetarium. During that week, we learned about the stars, looked at dinosaur bones, and there was always a ceramics and pottery class. This was our opportunity, as kids, to make a gift for our parents who had let us come to this fun place!
One year we were allowed to use the pottery wheel to make a small vase. We learned to put the lump of clay on the wheel, carefully use water and the wheel to shape our vase, how to use our fingers to create the opening – the mouth of the vase. Then we learned how to add glaze, and we waited excitedly for the final project as the teachers and adult volunteers put our creation into the kiln. It may not have been symmetrical, but in our eyes and in the eyes of our mom, it was perfect, as we joyously gave her our handmade gift.
Since we remembered how excited Mom had been with that gift, the next year we wanted to make something even better. The science teachers/volunteers obliged by unveiling their new project for us. We were going to make a little coffee table dish using a real leaf! They showed us how to roll out the clay and press the leaf into the clay so that all the veins of the leaf would be visible. We then were able to use different colors of green, yellow, and brown glaze so that each leaf would be unique. Finally, we etched our name and date on the bottom, and into the kiln it went. Perfect! Mom was so pleased with our gifts that she put them both on two different tables in the living room, and promised she would keep them forever.
While we will cherish special gifts that have been given to us during our lifetime, they are really a representation of the special feelings we hold for the person who gave us that gift. We can’t keep every single thing we have been given. Things break. They are lost. They may be stolen. We may need to move to a new place and can’t keep everything, so we give them away or donate them to charity.
When we pass from this life, our possessions aren’t going with us. Our gifts and treasures will be in our spirit, in our faith, with our family and our friends. Our possessions, all those gifts and treasures will not be important. It will be the little things in life – those will be our true gifts and treasures.
Here’s what I learned.
I do look at the gifts and treasures that I have received from my family and friends. They remind me of our special relationships and times together.
The times we shared great joys, celebrating special occasions and wonderful achievements in life.
The times we have shared great sorrow, and have held each other up with compassion.
The times we have encouraged each other when times have been rough, or when we needed someone to listen.
The times when we have showed gratitude for that helping hand.
The times we hurt each other and gave each other forgiveness, because none of us is perfect, and we need to understand and to forgive.
These are the gifts that will last a lifetime, the gifts that each of us has the ability to share willingly and generously.
Oh, and those little ceramic leaves? I don’t know what happened to the one I formed from that little mass of clay. It probably broke somewhere during the many years that have passed since I originally made it.
But when I was moving Mom into Memory Care, I found a few boxes that had probably not been opened in years. Packed away carefully in one of those boxes was a little green ceramic, pottery leaf with her son’s name etched on the bottom. It had a few chips in it, showing its age over the years.
It now sits on Mom’s nightstand, next to her bed. It is a gift that will last for her lifetime.
It’s the gift of love.
I’m Barb Rankin and this has been stuff I learned yesterday.
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