Margaret Lough

Stopping by my parents the other day, my mother brought me to a display she had out on the kitchen counter. She showed me these, a dozen or so little clay families and people laid out on tissue paper. At first I thought they were new, freshly molded by my young nieces. No, she said, you made these when you were their age, I just found them again, Aren’t they cool?

I studied them carefully. Some were clearly little families, parents, children, pets, all stuck carefully together like a family portrait. Some were individuals, loosely wrapped. While a few limbs looked a little wobbly, most of them were still whole.

As I looked at them, memories came back. The way the clay felt in my hands, trying to keep a head straight or pinch the snout of a dog just so. The impatience waiting for the clay to bake and cool. The other pieces we painted and displayed. Truthfully, I don’t remember much about the individual choices behind these tiny statues. But I do see them in the wholeness of the world we had together. The way my siblings and I spent hours building scenes and stories and memories. The way my mother carefully baked them solid. How she must have kept so much more than I realized.

I’m not sure what I’ll do with them. Maybe paint them, as we did with so many of the others. Or build some bigger art piece where I can keep them all together, this time in the sun. But even if I don’t figure that out, looking at them now makes me feel loved.

Sometimes it’s not the things we keep for ourselves. Sometimes it’s the memory someone else safeguards, waiting to share when the time is right.